The Right to information
ENThe right to the information includes many areas of life of a person and society. That is not just the right to receive information on the events in the state, to get familiar with the official documents of the state institutions, but also the right to get familiar with the information about oneself, one’s health as well as the right to be protected from the limitations of such information and illegal disclosure by the state or other persons. The right to the information manifests not only as a subjective right of every person to receipt of the information and its dissemination, but also as a freedom of mass media – the objective form of the expression of the right to the information on nowadays society. The right to the information also includes different aspects of legal regulation of the means of the mass media, also the issue of dissemination of the information. The right to the information not only satisfies the needs of the individual but also provides him with the possibilities to implement such important political right – the right to participate at the state governance. Most probably it is impossible to implement that political right without the proper implementation of the right to the information. In such a way the right to the information is an important element of the freedom of self-expression, encompassing such aspects as the right to receive information and the right to disseminate the information. Already on 19 December 1996 the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania has noted that the legislator is directly obligated to establish the procedure for the state institutions to provide the citizen with the information possessed about him.Thus, the form of the law as the legal source and the way of its adoption best guarantees the fact that the common interests predetermined by the constitutional system for the protection of the state secrecy will be coordinated with the safeguarding of the human right to look for the information, receive it and publish. The special laws are valid in Lithuania regulating the right to the information: 2 July 1996 (the wording of 2004) “The Law on the Provision of Information to the Public”, 11 January 2000 “The Law of the Republic of Lithuania on the Right to Receive Information from the State and Municipal Institutions”, 11 June 1996 “The Law of the Republic of Lithuania on the Legal Protection of the Personal Data (the wording of 2003), 25 November 1999 “The Law of the Republic of Lithuania on the State and Service Secrecy” (the wording of 2004); 20 June 2002 “The Law on the Operative Activities” (the wording of 2003); 3 October 1996 “The Law of the Republic of Lithuania on the Rights of the Patients and the Compensation for the Harm to their Health” (the wording of 2005); 6 June 1995 “The Law of the Republic of Lithuania on the Mental Health Care” (the wording of 2001); 11 May 2000 “The Law of the Republic of Lithuania on the Ethics of the Biomedical Researches” (the wording of 2004) and others. The right to the information is defined by Articles 5 and 25 of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania. Whereas, the law on the right to receive information from the state and municipal institutions describes in detail the aforementioned articles of the Constitution. The Constitution regulates the right to the information. The Constitutional Court has acknowledged that it is important to make this right more concrete by the laws. The Seimas has made it concrete with the help of the laws the list of which is provided [p. 63-64].
