Fiscal sustainability principle

Claim of unconstitutionality against the Legislative Act No. 03 of 2011 “by means of which is established the principle of fiscal sustainability” and against the Law No. 1473 of 2011 “by means of which is established a fiscal rule and are dictated other dispositions”. The claimant considers that by the issuing of the Legislative Act No. 03 of 2011 it’s configured an excess of the Congress in the exercise of the power of reformation of the Constitution, because by modifying the norms about the intervention of the state in the economy (in order to institute the principle of fiscal sustainability), what the Parliament really did was substituting the Constitution by stirring various of its fundamental pillars, such as the independence of the judicial power, the autonomy of the territorial entities and the delimitation of the competences of the Government and the Public Ministry. In relation to the Law No. 1473 of 2011, the complainant explains that the norms contained in it, only concretized the instrumentalization of the criteria of fiscal sustainability introduced in the Legislative Act No. 03 of 2011, and as a consequence, it is unconstitutional as well.

This Tribunal specified that the fiscal sustainability criteria sets up an instrument to reach progressively the finalities of the Social and Democratic State of Law and, therefore, doesn’t imply a substitution of the Constitution. In what’s related to the incident of fiscal sustainability, which consist in a procedure of constitutional nature geared to permit the Ministries or the Procurador General de la Nación, express to the High Courts the explanations about the affections that can evince them in the fiscal sustainability, particularly respect the effects of a ruling. The Court expressed about that instrument that is a regulated scenario of interlocution that doesn’t dissasemble the principle of separation of powers, given that the possibility contemplated for the Courts to modulate, modify or differ the effects of a sentence is facultative for each institution. As a consequence of the previous considerations, regarding the quoted Legislative Act the rules contained in it were declared constitutional, in relation to the Law, the Court declared itself inhibited to make a pronouncement due to the inadequacy of the suit.