PGR confirms receipt of Aguiar-Branco’s request for opinion on Gemeas case

The Attorney General’s Office confirmed this Thursday that it had received a request for an opinion from the President of the Assembly of the Republic after Chega requested access to the President of the Republic’s communications within the framework of the commission on the twins’ case.

In response to Lusa’s question, PGR said “receipt of the request for an opinion was confirmed very recently.”

The priority order, which Lusa’s agency had access to on Thursday, was sent by José Pedro Aguiar-Branco to the PGR Advisory Board and requires a response “as soon as possible.”

The document states that Chega, within the framework of the legal regime of parliamentary commissions of inquiry, submitted a request to the President of the Assembly of the Republic “for good offices, asking that the President of the Republic be contacted, if possible in digital format, to register and/or copy all communications (namely letters, messages written by mobile phone or via the Internet – Whatsapp, Messenger, Telegram and email messages) relating to the case of the Portuguese-Brazilian twins.”

Among other things, Chega wants access to correspondence (letters, emails, written communications, etc.) between the son of the Head of State, Nuno Rebelo de Sousa, and the President of the Republic; communications (letters, emails, written communications, etc.) between Nuno Rebelo de Sousa and the Government or members of the Government or members of government agencies; and an email from Nuno Rebelo de Sousa to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa dated 21 October 2019.

However, the order of the President of the Assembly of the Republic notes that the possibility of “incorporating private communications and telecommunications of respondents, in particular the recording and/or copying of all communications (…) into the main core, raises doubts about the right to a parliamentary investigation.”

Thus, “the objective is to carry out a preliminary analysis of a more comprehensive nature and to resolve the doubts listed, aware that the Assembly of the Republic, in the exercise of its oversight functions, has the task of monitoring compliance with the Constitution and the laws and of assessing the actions of the Government and the administration, and that parliamentary inquiries have the function of monitoring compliance with the Constitution and the laws,” the justification for the request submitted to the Advisory Council of the GRR emphasizes.

In his order, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco refers to the practice of the Constitutional Court.

“It is an established fact that parliamentary commissions of inquiry are essentially political bodies and are not and cannot be transformed into courts. It follows that the investigative powers of these commissions can never lead to a conviction in the case of conviction, and they cannot affect fundamental rights, which in the course of a criminal investigation can only be affected by a judicial decision,” he says.

According to the same case law, parliamentary commissions of inquiry “do not pursue the purpose of performing judicial functions.”

“But only to investigate facts and collect evidence concerning certain matters of public interest, with the subsequent presentation of its findings to Parliament and thus enabling it to effectively exercise its constitutional functions, namely the function of monitoring the actions of the government and public administration,” he adds.

However, with regard to the issue of access to private communications of individuals, it warns of “the potential infringement of freedom and the seriousness of the invasion of a person’s privacy – and even intimacy – that results from simply looking through one’s email inbox.”

This potential, according to the same thesis, is so significant “that the most powerful guarantees provided by the Constitution regarding the inviolability of communications and the confidentiality of personal data in the field of information technology must be mobilized in this area.”