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On Thursday there were 124 votes in favor of such amendments to the Statute, no one opposed, 6 deputies abstained. The new provisions will go into effect on December 21 of this year.
Remote Seimas sessions can be arranged when a state of emergency is declared, an emergency or quarantine situation is declared and the work of the Seimas may be threatened, due to objective circumstances or the need to limit the spread of communicable diseases. health or life of the Member States.
The remote sessions will be called by reasoned decision of the Board of Seimas.
Paulius Saudargas, vice president of the Seimas, evaluated the validation of the remote sessions of the Seimas as one of the most important works of this session. “I wish the Seimas that it is never necessary to switch to telecommuting,” said P. Saudargas, noting that if necessary, the Seimas could work remotely.
Skeptical of telecommuting, Seimas Remigijus member Žemaitaitis noted that this was not a case of war. He does not understand that a member of the Seimas can perform his functions, for example, somewhere in the room.
As Kęstutis Glaveckas, a member of the Seimas, observed, even during the war, parliaments worked. “With such decisions, we are only destroying our authority,” Glaveck said.
Criticizing the amendments to the Statute, Seimas member Vytautas Bakas considered whether we would like the police to work remotely, for example.
At the time, the conservative Andrius Vyšniauskas pointed out that this was a solution for the future, because there is no guarantee that there will be no pandemics or other problems in the future, for example related to the Astrava nuclear power plant.
The amendment to the Statute establishes that a session of the Seimas will be organized, the members of the Seimas will participate in it and the decisions on the issues considered will be made remotely in real time through teleconferencing platforms evaluated and recognized as secure by the National Cybersecurity Center .
The members of the Seimas will have to personally exercise their rights and obligations as members of the Seimas on the issues discussed in the Seimas session organized remotely. In said Seimas session, the use of information technologies must guarantee: the identification of the Seimas member participating in the session, the recording of the Seimas session, the transmission of the video and audio of the Seimas sitting on the website del Seimas, the preservation of the video and audio of the session.
The amendment to the Bylaws also provides for the additional identification of a member of the Seimas participating in the voting by recording and photographing the moment of the vote. This would ensure that a Seimas member would vote in person and during the vote the true will expressed by the Seimas member would be clearly recorded, and when voting on the adoption of a law or other act of the Seimas, the EU Regulation would provide a additional identification.
The President of the Republic and his authorized representatives, members of the Government, the Attorney General, the Auditor General, the President of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania, other persons participating in the Seimas session, as well as the persons invited to the session, they could join the Seimas remotely.
Remote sessions of the Seimas may not be called in the case of a closed-door session of the Seimas, the first session of the newly elected Seimas, or a session in which the President of the Republic takes an oath, as well as the members of the Government, the judges of the Constitutional Court, the judges of the Supreme Court, the president, other state officials appointed by the Seimas.
The Seimas will not be able to vote remotely on an amendment to the Constitution or a constitutional bill.
Controversies on legislative or procedural issues related to the organization of remote meetings will be examined by the Seimas Ethics and Procedures Committee.
It is planned to use the Microsoft Teams platform for remote meetings.
The draft amendments to the Statute were prepared by the Chancellor of the Seimas in 2020. November 9 A working group was formed by order of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, headed by Ona Buišienė, Senior Advisor of the Division of State Law of the Legal Department of the Chancellery of the Seimas.
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