LISBON (Reuters) – The Azores Islands of Portugal, some 1,400 kilometers from the Portuguese coast, have violated the national charter by forcing air passengers to remain quarantined for 14 days, ruled the country’s Constitutional Court.
The court said the island government treated others as if they were serving a short criminal sentence by confining them to hotels, regardless of whether they had symptoms or not.
“The force to legislate on rights, freedom and promises rests with the parliament or the (national) government, and only the two sovereign bodies,” the court ruled.
The regional government of the Azores said in March that all arriving air passengers deserve to be confined for two weeks in a hotel.
The government first paid for the hotel, but those who arrived from May 8 were informed that they had to pay for their own stay.
The Constitutional Court’s ruling on July 30, made public Wednesday, came after a guy filed a legal appeal for having to be quarantined for two weeks at a hotel on Sao Miguel, the island of the Azores.
A small court ruled that the man, who had a circle of relatives in the house in Sao Miguel, had been disadvantaged from his liberty and ordered the government to release him immediately. Court documents imply that the man’s food was sent to his room 3 times a day, that he could not see his circle of family or friends and that he had to leave his room blank himself.
Following the small court’s decision, prosecutors asked the Constitutional Court for an explanation of the legal framework.
From the decision of the decreasing court to mid-May, those traveling to the Azores will now have to pass a COVID-19 check before their adventure or upon arrival if they wish to be admitted.
Vasco Cordeiro, president of the Azores regional government, told reporters that the government had complied with any of the judicial decisions, but it had transparent that the legal framework was not enough to address the totally unforeseen scenario of the pandemic.
Report through Catarina Demony and Patricia Vicente Rua, Additional Report through Victoria Waldersee, Edited through Andrei Khalip and Alexandra Hudson
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