Rule of law

Legal practitioners present at the discussion were most worried about the proliferation of unaccountable secret surveillance of private persons carried out by law enforcement agencies, such as the Anticorruption Agency. A structural problem was being observed: judges would issue surveillance permissions in almost 100% of cases, as their own career prospects depended directly on the information reports provided on their persona by the Anticorruption Agency to decision-makers, without the judges having any possibility to be acquainted with this information. This could be regarded as indirect pressure, as hardly any judge would consider a decision which would be contrary to the interests of the Anticorruption Agency. 

When the Lithuanian Bar took legal action in 2019 in this regard, incited by the belief that the president and the vice president of the Bar were under legal surveillance, the case reached the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The incident led to important pressure being imposed on the Bar by the executive power, which affected the independence of the Bar. In 2020, a complaint was also submitted to the European Commission regarding infringement of EU law by misuse of the Data Protection Directive, but the Lithuanian Bar had not yet received a response.

It was noted that the Lithuanian Council of Judges had no direct contact with the Ministry of Justice and was not involved in the drafting of the judicial budget, nor was it represented in the government. However, according to a participant, there were no clear criteria for how this budget was decided. Participants underlined the inadequately low salaries of judges, which had not yet reached their level of before the 2008 crisis. It was said that judges were the group mostly affected by the crisis among all high-ranked public officials, as their salaries would rise less than those of other high-ranked public officials. This was deemed as not in line with the principle of judicial independence, and, as a result, the courts were losing qualified lawyers to the private sector.

Participants also raised concerns regarding the procedure of the selection of judges. Although the Special Commission for the Selection of Judges would provide a ranked list of candidates to the President of the Republic, the President had the absolute power to select any candidate from the list, without the obligation to provide any substantive argumentation. Similarly, legal practitioners pointed to the unclear rules on temporary transfers of judges without their consent from one court to another. The Judicial Council had the right to temporarily transfer a judge to a court to ensure a proper functioning of the court, but there were no clear legal criteria as to the choice of the judge to be relocated. In this context it was stressed that the courts in Lithuania were lacking around 20% of the judges needed and, hence, the workload of the judges was often too high, thus either leading to longer time periods for
a ruling on a case or a poorer quality of decision-making.

Furthermore, a concern was expressed about the fact that due to conflicts between political powers some major courts were not in full composition. The Supreme Court of Lithuania had been without a chairman since 2019, and the Constitutional Court had unfilled seats as well. This prolonged the judicial process, affected the quality of the rulings and compromised the reputation of the courts.

Concerning corruption, it was mentioned that some changes had been made to create unfavourable conditions for corruption in the legal sphere. For instance, the process of assigning judges to cases had been computerised and the system was connected with the database of declared conflicts of interest. However, some participants expressed the view that the Anticorruption Agency was not the most efficient channel to address the issue, as their own actions lacked transparency. Rather, a stricter legal framework and improved economic independence of the judges should be relied upon.

As regards the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was agreed that it had had an effect on human rights, e.g. restricted freedom of movement, but only now did the courts receive requests from the government to evaluate whether those restrictions had been in line with the Constitution. However, it was noted that similar issues had been prevalent also before the pandemic, as the parliament often adopted regulations through a "urgent procedure" framework, which did not leave time for the courts or the civil society to participate in the policymaking. It was emphasised, however, that the pandemic had worsened the legislative process in Lithuania and shifted the balance of power from the legislative 
to the executive branch.