Europos žmogaus teisių konvencijos taikymas ir įgyvendinimas Lietuvos vidaus teisėje ir praktikoje 1995-2013 m

ENThe Act of the Re-EstabUshment of the State of Lithuania of 11 March 1990 emphasised restoration and legal continuity of the State and declared its independence from the dissolving Soviet Union. The same Act declared the willingness of the newly re-established Lithuanian State to ensure the respect for human and citizens' rights. Already in 1991, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania, respecting human rights values, pronounced its accession to the documents of the 'International Bill of Human Rights'. Acceptance of Lithuania's membership in the Council of Europe on 14 May 1993 and signing the Convention on the same day, and, even more, the subsequent ratification of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950) and of its Protocols Nos. 4, 7 and 11 on 27 April 1995 clearly demonstrated efforts of the State to strengthen human rights standards and the rule of law within the young society of Lithuania after the fall of the Soviet regime. Lithuania's accession to the Convention has been effective since 20 June 1995. The respect for human rights and the rule of law opened for Lithuania further possibilities towards the integration into international alliances: on 29 March 2004 Lithuania joined the NATO Alliance and on 1 May 2004 was accepted as a full member of the European Union. Now, after 18 years of the application of the European Convention on Human Rights in the Lithuanian legal system, it can be concluded that for Lithuania the European Convention on Human Rights has become an 'extraordinary success story', which has enormously influenced the domestic law and practice. Lithuania chose a so called 'legal' way for the ratification of the Convention - at first, to analyse a real situation at domestic legal order, and only after such analysis to take a decision concerning the ratification of the Convention.Such legal way has clearly proved its effectiveness after eighteen years of the application of the Convention in the Lithuanian legal system, which will be demonstrated later on in this article. Prior to ratification, a working group was set up in order to analyse the laws of the Republic of Lithuania as regards their compatibility with the requirements of the Convention. The working group identified problematic areas of the Lithuanian legal order and laws which were in conflict with the Convention and submitted concrete proposals as regards their compatibility. During the last six months of the year 1995, after Lithuania ratified the Convention on 27 April 1995, only 16 complaints from Lithuania reached the European Commission of Human Rights (abolished in 1998, after Protocol No. U came into force). During 1996, the European Commission on Human Rights got 41 complaints against Lithuania. During 1997, the Commission got 61 complaints; only one application in 1997 was declared admissible, which concerned the question of the legality of the preventive detention in Lithuania", a denied access to a court and the right to have adequate time to prepare for defence. For comparison, during the year 2003 already 442 new applications were lodged against Lithuania. In 2003, the European Court adopted 3 final judgments in Lithuanian cases and 199 applications were declared inadmissible or struck out of the list of cases. In 2009 and 2010, approximately the same number of new applications against Lithuania reached Strasbourg (284 and 286 accordingly). In 2009, 261 cases against Lithuania were attributed to the judicial formation in the Court, and accordingly in 2012, 373 cases were put before the Courts judicial body.In 2012, the Court received 413 new applications from Lithuania. While during the years 2010 and 2011, the Court was able to decide approximately 160 cases per year, in 2012 this number already reached 713 cases disposed of by the judiciary. The majority of these cases were declared inadmissible by a single-judge formation (Article 27 of the Convention; a single-judge formation since 1 June 2010, when Protocol No. 14 entered into force) or a three-judge Committee (Article 28 of the Convention). In total, 703 cases were declared inadmissible. In March 2013, Lithuania had a workload of 227 cases pending before a decision body. Since the Convention entered into force in respect of Lithuania, on 20 June 1995, until 31 December 2012, the total number of 87 judgments (some cases were joined) were given in cases against Lithuania. [...] In total, 3,931 cases against Lithuania during those years were disposed of by the judiciary. In 3,771 cases a single judge or a three-judge Committee adopted inadmissibility decisions (information as to September 2013). Now, having applied the Convention in Lithuania for 18 years, we can be proud that, in principle, the main legal problems related to Articles 5 and 6 and that identified as very problematic by the Strasbourg Court, have disappeared. This was due to the States efforts to comply with the Convention requirements at domestic level and to change the old Soviet legislature and practice.