Lietuva in brief - 2012-10-03

Today’s Internet and information technologies cannot give a 100 percent guarantee that online votes would be protected from any kind of attack, said Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius on Sept. 27, reports ELTA. On the other hand, Kubilius said e-voting development could have been started from Lithuanian citizens residing abroad. The PM suggests continuing discussions on the issue. On Sept. 25 Lithuania’s parliament decided to reject amendments to the laws on elections to the European Parliament, president, referendum and parliamentary elections which spoke about applying a new form of voting - voting online - granting the right of online voting to Lithuanian citizens abroad. A poll conducted by market research company Baltijos Tyrimai revealed that as many as three quarters of Lithuania’s residents are in favor of allowing online voting in Lithuania.

Land owners in Lithuania, who are selling their land, will have to report it to their neighbors so they can also have an opportunity to buy the land, reports ELTA. The government ordered the Ministry of Agriculture to draft a respective draft law. It is expected that the amendments would prevent land speculations. “The government instructed the Ministry of Agriculture to prepare a draft law, preventing any potential land speculation by assigning priority of buying land to neighbors or tenants,” said Minister of Agriculture Kazys Starkevicius on Monday.

Brussels plans to set up a team of prosecutors empowered to deal with fraud cases across the European Union (EU), a senior official said last week, reports AFP. “The European Commission plans to put out the text of a regulation for the setting up of a European public prosecutor’s office next June,” Giovanni Kessler, head of the EU’s anti-fraud office, said during a visit to Lithuania. Kessler, an Italian magistrate who was named head of the EU’s anti-fraud arm in 2010, said the move was needed to protect the 27-nation bloc’s taxpayers. “The scale of cross-border crimes such as smuggling and fraud make it hard for individual member states to beat those involved; therefore, the EU needs a common international authority to deal with transnational chains of, let’s say, cigarettes or criminal gangs’ activity,” Kessler explained. The organization would work with national anti-fraud offices.