Mykolas Romeris apie Klaipėdos krašto autonomiją

Abstract

Lithuania regained the Klaipėda Territory only after the 1923 uprising. In 1924, in Paris, Lithuania concluded the convention, under which the sovereignty of the Territory was finally conveyed to Lithuania. Lithuania committed herself to grant the status of autonomy to the Territory.
A spectrum of research conducted by M. Romeris is sufficiently extensive. He, as a specialist of constitutional law, was concerned with the problem of the autonomy of the Klaipėda Territory. The said issue was also of special importance to the doctrine of the period, it received wide resounding in foreign countries, and especially in the German constitutional and international law doctrine. Another circumstance, linking Prof. M. Romeris with the Klaipėda Territory, is that in 1932 he was the judge from Lithuania (ad hoc) in the Permanent International Court of Justice when handling the dispute between Lithuania and the Entente States relating to the interpretation of the Klaipėda Territory Convention and Statute.
Having surveyed M. Romeris research on the issue of the Klaipėda Territory, the problems under study may be subdivided into two main topics: the justification of the lawful interests of Lithuania in respect to the Klaipėda Territory and guarantee of the sovereign rights of Lithuania in the structure of the Klaipėda Territory autonomy.
M. Romeris in his research considered the rights of Lithuania in respect of the Klaipėda Territory as being justified. In his opinion, the Territory was conveyed on the basis of the other Lithuanian national dependence of its residents and bearing in mind the economic interests of the newly recreating State of Lithuania. On the basis of P. Fauchile, he proposed to evaluate the rebellion in the Territory organised by the Lithuanian Government and the annexation of the Klaipėda Territory as reintegration: i.e. the State recovers its former lands (e.g., Alsace and France). However, in the opinion of Romeris, in the case of the Klaipėda Territory, not all the formal signs of reintegration were present, since such action is possible only in the presence of war.
He evaluated the cession of the Klaipėda Territory as the complex but uniform process, during which the State of Lithuania acquired all sovereign rights to the Territory under the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty.
M. Romeris’ derived a conclusion from his studies of the Klaipėda Territory Convention and Statute that all measures for autonomy control ensued not from the Statute but from the sovereign powers of Lithuania. Application and nature of such measures are limited by the only condition – they should not violate the structure of the autonomy determined by the Convention.
M. Romeris, while researching the structure of the Territory autonomy, basing on the Klaipėda Territory Convention and the Statute as well as the sovereign rights of the State of Lithuania distinguished the following measures for protection of Lithuania’s sovereignty: the right of veto of the governor in respect of unlawful acts of Seimelis, the right of the governor to be elected or to delegate the formation of the Directory, the Chairperson of the Directory, the establishment of the Statute court, the right of the governor recognised by the Permanent International court to recall the Chairperson of the Directory.