The following is a guest post by Eduardo Soares, a senior foreign law specialist from Brazil who covers Portuguese-speaking jurisdictions, and Elizabeth Marin, an intern working with Eduardo in the Global Legal Research Directorate at the Law Library of Congress.
The Law Library recently published a report titled Civic Space Legal Framework that provides information on the civic space legal frameworks in Portugal and Romania. This report provides an overview of several fundamental rights that are constitutionally protected in both countries, such as the right to access information, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, assembly and association, right to privacy and data protection, and prohibition of discrimination. Furthermore, as members of the European Union (EU), both countries are bound by the rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and both have ratified the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
These rights are fully discussed in the report, including the laws that further regulate these guarantees. The report also talks about regulations on an open internet, civil society organizations, and civic participation. The Romanian report includes a section on freedom of religion and the Portuguese report has a section on limitations on civil liberties.
We invite you to review the information provided in our report. You can also review our previous 2020 report on the civic space legal framework or browse additional reports from the Law Library on other topics. To receive alerts when new reports are published, you can subscribe to email updates and the RSS feed for Law Library Reports (click the “subscribe” button on the Law Library’s website).
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