On July 7 Aušra Rauličkytė, adviser to the President of the Republic of Lithuania, presented the presidential decree returning the proposed amendments to the Law on the Protection of Minors against the Detrimental Effect of Public Information (No. XIP-110Gr) to the Seimas for renewed consideration.
The Seimas decided to consider the returned bill once again (a supplementary voting took place: 90 MPs voted to consider the bill once again, and 20 MPs voted to consider the bill not enacted). The committee on education, science and culture was appointed the main committee to consider the proposed amendments. The committee on the information society and the committee on human rights were also appointed to consider the bill. The preliminary date of consideration at the Seimas is July 14.
As his reason for returning the proposed amendment to the Law on the Protection of Minors against the Detrimental Effect of Public Information to the Seimas for renewed consideration, the president stated that the criteria on which public information is considered to have a detrimental effect were formulated in an abstract and unclear manner and that therefore nearly all public information may be acknowledged as having a detrimental effect on the mental health and physical, intellectual or moral development of minors (for example, information which provokes fear or horror, denigrates family values, encourages physical passivity, etc.). Abstract and unclear criteria of this nature are also stipulated in article 5, which defines what public information is not categorised as information having a detrimental effect on the development of minors.
The head of state emphasised that criteria formulated in an abstract manner provide an opportunity for the institutions undertaking the supervision of the activities of the creators and disseminators of public information to freely interpret what public information should or should not be deemed as having a detrimental effect on mental health and physical, intellectual or moral development of minors. According to the president, while the necessity to ensure the protection of minors against the detrimental effect of public information can be acknowledged, this objective may not be pursued at the expense of constitutional principles. “Taking into consideration that the it was intended for the bill to be enacted only on March 1, 2010, I propose correcting the legal faults in the near future and ensuring that the provisions of the proposed law comply with the constitutional principles of the rule of law, legal certainty, and legal clarity and are not in conflict with the guarantees of an open society and pluralistic democracy”, the president stated
