Lietuva in brief - 2011-03-24

Over the past decade, the crime rate has fallen in Lithuania, a study suggests, reports ELTA. Senior researcher with the Criminal Research Unit of the Institute of Law, Gintautas Sakalauskas, said that the crime rate registered in Lithuania was up to half lower than in Western European countries, including Great Britain, Germany and France. Recently, the cases of burglary, robbery and murder have decreased significantly, Sakalauskas added. “If we take trends over the past five years, we see a fall in all four key indicators of registered crime - registered offenses, solved offenses, the number of guilty and convicted persons,” said Sakalauskas. The criminologist noted that the crisis had no impact on the crime rate. Sakalauskas recalled that Lithuania had the largest number of murders per 100,000 residents across the European Union - about 6.6. In Western European countries, this indicator was below 1. Some 217 people a year are murdered in Lithuania.

Various Lithuanian political parties that have ruled should be blamed for the fact that the country depends on a sole energy supplier, President Dalia Grybauskaite said on March 16, reports ELTA.  The head of state stressed that lobbying is evident in lawmaking, when asked whether the parties have received money from Russian energy companies up until now. “We also see lobbying in laws, I have in mind even the Law on the Heat Sector; how the fuel is purchased,” Grybauskaite said. “All have been satisfied with the status quo for twenty years, that we depend on one supplier. A large part of the right-wing and left-wing parties, however, lived on the energy sector,” Grybauskaite said. The president notes that now the situation in the energy sector is changing, as LEO LT was liquidated, and the electricity market has started to operate. Currently, Lithuania is buying over half of the necessary electricity at competitive prices without a dictate from a separate monopoly, Grybauskaite emphasized.