State continuity of the Baltic states

[8] Russia insists that incorporation of the Baltic states gained international de jure recognition by the agreements made in the Yalta and Potsdam conferences and by the Helsinki accords.

[16] On the other hand, de facto interruption of statehood[17] due to foreign occupation for a period of fifty years[3] did indeed occur, giving a place to the legal principle of ex factis jus oritur,[3] as well as irrevocable territory and demographic changes that make the Baltic case much more complex than mere restitutio in integrum (a restoration of—in this case—territorial integrity).

The European Great Powers accorded de jure recognition of Estonia and Latvia on 26 January 1921 and Lithuania on 20 December 1922.

The Soviet Union used a similar pattern with all three Baltic states, beginning with ultimatums on the basis of alleged failures to fulfill mutual assistance pacts signed the previous year.

In the Constitution of 1938, the president received broader powers, but the parliament was entrusted with legislation instead of the previous system of presidential decrees.

[30] The Soviet Foreign Ministry issued formal protests against the Baltic diplomatic missions remaining open in Washington, DC, and elsewhere.

[34] After the invasion of Denmark and Norway by Nazi Germany on 9 April 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8389, under which the United States Department of the Treasury froze all financial assets of occupied European countries in the US.

After the Soviet Occupation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, Executive Order 8389 was extended to the assets and properties of the three Baltic countries.

[35] During the first Soviet occupation in July 1940, the United States issued Executive Order 8484 which froze Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian financial assets, including gold reserves.

[clarification needed][40] In 1992 and 1993, the United Kingdom government transferred an equal amount of gold reserves equivalent to £90 million back to the Baltic countries.

[41] In 1991, Sweden promised Estonia to restitute the gold, and, in 1998, the Swedish government discovered the bank accounts belonging to Baltic nationalities.

[43] The gold reserves deposited by the three Baltic states prior to 1940 into the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland remained intact.

Supported by other NATO members, the final act instead stated that the current "frontiers"—boundaries of territorial control, as opposed to "borders" which would signify boundaries of sovereign jurisdiction—of the Soviet Union would not be violated.

[72] Estonia's official position since 1990 has been that the election for the "People's Riigikogu" was illegal and unconstitutional, since it was held under an amended electoral law that was passed only by the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies.

The upper house, the National Council, had been dissolved shortly after the occupation; the Estonian Constitution explicitly required bills to be passed by both chambers to become law.

According to August Rei, one of independent Estonia's last envoys to Moscow, under the Estonian constitution, the Chamber of Deputies had "no legislative power" apart from the National Council.

[73] On these bases, Estonia maintains that all acts of the "People's Riigikogu," including the resolution to join the Soviet Union, were void.

Smetona left the country on 14 June, soon after the troops arrived, and transferred his powers on an interim basis to Prime Minister Antanas Merkys, who stood first in the line of succession to the presidency.

Therefore, Lithuania does not recognize Merkys or Paleckis as legitimate presidents, and claims that all actions leading to the Soviet annexation were ipso facto void.

According to the definition the state has to have a territory, a permanent population, an effective government and the capacity to enter into international relations.

[83] The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe noted the Soviet Union violated the right of the Baltic people to self-determination.

[104][105] The last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev established a 26-member Commission to evaluate the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and its Secret Protocols.

Contemporary Russian Federation has refused to be bound pre-1940 agreements which the Soviet Union had entered with either Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia has announced that the distortion of history and allegations of unlawful occupations are the main reasons for the problems in the Baltics–Russia relations.

The Court made a number of rulings that affirmed the Baltic states were occupied and forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union until 1991.

[110] On 16 March 2006 the Grand Chamber of the Court made the following statement in the case of Tatjana Ždanoka vs Latvia (paragraph 119 of its judgment): Latvia, together with the other Baltic States, lost its independence in 1940 in the aftermath of the partition of Europe between Germany and the USSR agreed by Adolf Hitler's Germany and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union by way of the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, an agreement contrary to the generally recognised principles of international law.

The ensuing annexation of Latvia by the Soviet Union was orchestrated and conducted under the authority of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the Communist Party of Latvia (CPL) being a satellite branch of the CPSU.Subsequently to Ždanoka, a number of other judgments and decisions were adopted by Chambers (smaller formations) of the Court in cases regarding issues ranging from the restriction of political rights of former Soviet politicians to criminal conviction for crimes against humanity, whereby the Court noted that illegal occupation of the Baltic States by the USSR had taken place in 1940 (see Kolk vs Estonia,[111] Penart vs Estonia).

The totalitarian communist regime of the Soviet Union conducted large-scale and systematic actions against the Estonian population, including, for example, the deportation of about 10,000 persons on 14 June 1941 and of more than 20,000 on 25 March 1949.

[113]The court's rulings appear favorable to several aspects, which are important with regard to restoration of the Baltic states including the legal continuity doctrine.

"[116] In the Baltic states the court rulings were accepted within the general lines of the Western non-recognition policy (see Stimson Doctrine).