Lietuva in brief - 2012-07-26

Lithuanian Justice Minister Remigijus Simasius has opposed the idea of the European Commission (EC), according to which the government encroaches further into private enterprise by requiring every large company with over 250 employees to introduce the position of data protection inspector, reports ELTA. The plans were deliberated on July 24 in the informal council of the European justice and interior affairs ministers. Lithuania’s justice minister said that such an obligation would impose a disproportionate burden on business. According to him, a better decision is needed when it comes to attempts of ensuring personal data protection. Minister Simasius said this role could be assigned to a current employee, without creating a new job. This would allow keeping balance between proper personal data protection and reducing the administrative burden. Simasius stressed that this principle should be applied both to the private and public sector on equal terms. The EC has estimated that the new duty of establishing a new position across the private sector of the EU could cost around 320 million euros.

On July 20, the Lithuanian team forming the patriotic expedition Mission Siberia ’12 left from Vilnius Railway Station, reports ELTA. This year’s expedition is the 7th in a row since 2006. A team of 16 young men and women will visit and tidy up cemeteries of Lithuanian exiles in the Republic of Khakassia in the Russian Federation; they will also meet with local Lithuanian exile representatives and their descendents. Since 2006, a total of 80 cemeteries of Lithuanian exiles were cleaned. Historians estimate that by 1953 around 270,000 Lithuanian residents were deported to the harshest climate locales in the Soviet Union. The figures say that 58 percent of them were deported to Altai Republic, 27 percent to the Novosibirsk region, while the remaining were scattered in other areas of the Soviet Union and Central Asia where they lived a life of mockery, hunger and misery.