Archive

Abstract. The goal of this article is to apply a general reputation model to the media. Putting reputation into the centre of media analysis allows one to concentrate on publishers’ and broadcasters’ corporate identities and their situation in the aggressive market. Reputation analysis contributes to the understanding of the specifics of the media business. The Media Reputation Quotient, developed by the author for the measurement of media reputation, consists of four dimensions: (1) a public or ‘external’ dimension, showing how society and the state understand fundamental values of freedom, equality and solidarity; (2) an ‘invisible’ market dimension that evaluates media concentration, prices, and circulation; (3) an organizational dimension that consists of slightly modified dimensions fr om the classical Reputation Quotient; and (4) a journalistic dimension based on the media products’ quality and creativity. The Media Reputation Quotient is an attempt to use the classical Reputation Quotient (designed primarily for commercial purposes) for the analysis of a mixed (commercial and public) business. Modifications of the Reputation Quotient demonstrate that a comparison of reputation between different sectors is very lim ited.

Abstract. The article analyses parliamentary oversight exercised by the Seimas (Lithuanian parliament). As a legal institute of a constitutional status, parliamentary oversight is complex in its nature in that it influences the executive branch by means of established oversight instruments in a systemic and independent manner and ensures the continuous and effective functioning of the executive power. Based on the doctrine of the sovereignty of the nation, the Seimas is the only governmental body that can exercise parliamentary oversight. This function of the Seimas is therefore very significant. In the article, the author analyses the function of parliamentary oversight exercised by the Seimas and the legal and practical conditions necessary for the permanent committees of the Seimas to exercise the function effectively and continuously.

Summary. This paper presents the research results in evaluation of managers’ intelligence competencies in Lithuania. The total sample of 201 consists of subsamples in two industries: retail (103 respondents) and manufacturing (98 respondents). The logic of such sample structure was determined by significant differences in the management practices of the two industries. The objective of the paper was to identify what competencies are predictors of leadership performance. A theory of performance is the basis for the concept of competency. Maximum performance is believed to occur when the person’s capability or talent is consistent with the needs of the job demands and the organizational environment. The theoretical model of the empirical research rests on the classification of intelligence competencies into three clusters: emotional, social and cognitive intelligence competencies. The theoretical model was
supported by empirical evidence from the perspectives of the two industries. The Wilcoxon rank-sum test found that levels of both emotional and social intelligence competencies among Lithuanian executives were higher than cognitive intelligence competencies. It was discovered that executives in the manufacturing industry possess higher level of systems thinking competency, while executives in the retail industry have greater levels of emotional and social intelligence competency.

Abstract. European Union laws frequently replace, change, or complement national laws. This has prompted domestic interest groups to promote their cases more readily before EU institutions, naturally, also ‘taking’ the attention of social science with them. However, while the analysis of EU level interest groups receives a fair amount of attention, there is a surprising lack of studies on national interest groups. The objective of this article is to analyze the present status of scientific literature on the Lithuanian business interest associations and prove that it is still of crucial importance to analyze the Lithuanian business interest associations on the national level. Moreover, the article presents partial findings received from the Lithuanian business interst associations’ survey which was carried out in the period 2007–2009 by the author of the present article and during which 112 Lithuanian business interest associations were investigated. The conclusions presented in the final part of the article suggest new insights and aspects for further research into business interest associations on the national level.

Summary. The authors of the article analyze the topicalities of the legal regulation of the natural gas market of Lithuania. This issue was not chosen accidentally. Firstly, natural gas sector is one of the most important in the state. Secondly, the problems of the legal and economic regulation of natural gas market are very tricky and sensitive. Thirdly, this topic is significant both in theory and in practice. This article is divided into three parts. The conception of and the need for the legal regulation of natural gas market in the context of social changes are described in the first part. The problems related to the situation in the natural gas market of Lithuania are presented in the second part. In the third part the authors disclose the main problems of the legal regulation of the natural gas market of Lithuania and suggest possible solutions. At the end of the article reasoned conclusions are drawn and recommendations regarding the necessary changes seeking for an effective legal regulation of natural gas market and protection of the rights of customers are suggested.

Summary. During an economic crisis, increased competition in the market, declining manufacturing, and increased unemployment may encourage some entities to claim allocation of equipment and personnel for vocational education and training in an attempt to enter into or strengthen their position in the vocational education and training services market. They may use various means, including lobbying or even corrupt methods to acquire the right to provide such services and thus claim national budget funds or resources of the National Employment Fund. Formal vocational education and training may be exercised only with an appropriate license. The process of granting of these licenses should be regulated effectively. Procedures should be transparent, evaluation criteria should be well-defined, the indicators—measurable, and the evaluation—reliable and valid. The following issues were tackled in this study. Firstly, the authors analysed the anticorruption aspect of administrative legal regulation of the right to carry out formal vocational education and training. Secondly, we argued that the lack of ongoing anti-corruption evaluation of the administrative legal regulation and gaps in regulation constitute the preconditions for the rise of corruption. Thirdly, the study presents recommendations for the development of regulation and reducing of the risk of corruption.

Abstract. The author of the present article analyzes the legal regulation regarding the subjects responsible for the protection of public order in municipal territories with an emphasis on the collision between the activity and responsibility of the police and municipal institutions. The author suggests multiple solutions to the problem of competence delimitation in the sphere of public protection. According to the author, in municipal territories four multiple-choice forms of public order protection are possible and the right to choose the forms which would most effectively guarantee the safety of the community should belong to local government institutions. What is more, the article deals with an analysis of the organizational problems related to the implementation of the functions of public order protection and an evaluation of the prospects of the decentralization of these functions. The author presents a critical evaluation of the situation when public order protection requirements which logically derive from the interests of local residents are identified by central public administration institutions rather than local government institutions or regional-level institutions. The planning of the safe environment strategy must be based on the interests of a country’s local residents; what is more, the particularities of different regions must be considered. To solve the mentioned problems two alternative public order protection strategy models are suggested. Finally, the author comes to the conclusion that local government institutions should be actively motivated to get involved in securing public safety through legal and organizational means.

Summary. In the present paper, the system of the sources of the Lithuanian administrative law is discussed. Till the present time, this institution of the general part of administrative law has not been investigated in detail in any work of Lithuanian theorists. The present investigation begins with the concept of the source of administrative law and the major attention is focused on the analysis of the structure of the system of the sources of administrative law. One of the most frequently used bases for the formation of this system in the theory of administrative law is the grouping of the sources of administrative law according to the legal power. Administrative legal regulation of public management (administration) is provided in abundant legal norms of laws and bylaws. However, the number of the norms of administrative law may differ in various legal acts: a legal act may consist of the norms of administrative law only or a part of the provisions of a legal act (belonging to another branch of law) may be bound up with a group of such norms.

Summary. In the field of comparative administrative law scientists pay increasingly more attention to the applicability of contracts as this phenomenon is rapidly evolving. The approaches to the contracts made by public administrative subjects differ depending on the country; however, in continental law such contracts are commonly divided into private contracts and administrative (public) contracts. The author of this article discusses such questions as to what legal tradition the Lithuanian law can be ascribed and whether the institute of administrative contract can be successfully applied in the Lithuanian legal system. The author pays special attention to the fact that the administrative law of Lithuania lags behind other countries as research into the contract as a form of the legal practice of administrative subjects is insufficient and rather fragmentary. The following conclusion is made: in the administrative law of Lithuania there is no tradition to recognize the contract as an institute of administrative law, though a tendency to acknowledge the existence of the administrative contract de facto in the doctrine and jurisprudence is observable. According to the author, the existence of the administrative contract in Lithuania is more likely to be only a presumption based on fragmentary examples of the identification of the contracts in comparative law with the contracts in the Lithuanian law. However, the common theory of administrative contract has not yet been formed.

Summary. The objective of this article is to examine the legal nature of exemption clauses, analyse their relationship to other similar provisions that regulate contractual liability, present classification of exemption clauses and highlight their drafting features. Although contractual terms limiting a party’s liability are common in commercial contracts, in Lithuania they have only been analysed as a type of unfair clauses in consumer contracts. The article states that exclusion and limitation clauses are contractual provisions that aim to exclude or limit contractual liability of the appropriate party in advance, i.e. before such liability occurs. The possibility to incorporate an exemption clause into a contract is derived from the principle of freedom of contract, the non-mandatory nature of civil law provisions and the creditor’s subjective right to void of any of his rights.

Summary. If copyright and related rights were administered only by their owners individually the civil circulation of these rights would be far less intensive. Furthermore, the development of certain businesses based on commercial uses of copyright and related rights would be hardly imaginable. Collective management organizations are effective intermediaries between the owners of copyright and related rights and the users of the subject matter of copyright and related rights. Three main models of collective management of copyright and related rights can be distinguished: mandatory collective management, presumption-based or implied collective management and extended collective management. In Lithuanian national law, only the mandatory collective management model is established. Mandatory collective management and implied (presumption-based) collective management can be applied only in the following cases: to collectively manage the copyright and related rights which are not exclusive by their nature but merely rights to remuneration; to collectively manage the right to compensation (remuneration) for exceptions to exclusive rights established in line with the three-step test; to collectively manage exclusive copyright and related rights once limitations on the execution of these exclusive rights are expressively allowed by international treaties.

Summary. The article begins with a general explanation of the term ‘representation’, later on the main attributes of representation in civil procedure are distinguished and analyzed. In the author’s opinion, achievements of civil law science are important in the analysis of the concept; therefore, the main statements of the civil procedure doctrine theories (fiction, representation and interim) are investigated. During the research it was noticed that there is no uniform definition of procedural representation. In real life, there are not only legal institutions belonging to certain branches of law but also institutions combining norms of several branches of law and, consequently, becoming interdisciplinary. Norms regulating representation in civil procedure shall be assigned to the interdisciplinary institution of representation. Such an assignment allows to clearly realize the place of the institution under discussion in the legal system, confining considerably marginal interpretation of procedural representation as a part of general civil representation or as a totally independent legal institution of civil procedure law, because none of these points of view fully reflect relationships that form in real life.

Summary. This research paper deals with the assessment of the use of recommended resale prices in vertical relations between the supplier and the reseller. The author of the paper states that usually the use of recommended prices does not raise competition concerns and does not infringe Article 81 of the European Community (EC) Treaty because it does not conform with the concept of an ‘agreement’ under this article and, therefore, does not restrict competition within the relevant market. It is alleged that a recommendation is a unilateral act and even if the reseller uses the recommended prices, the agreement between the supplier and the reseller cannot be automatically established. A recommendation becomes an ‘agreement’ if all the three following facts are established: firstly, the supplier expresses a clear intention to use the recommended prices jointly, i.e. with the help of the reseller; secondly, the supplier uses the means of direct or indirect inducement or coercion to induce or force the reseller to adhere to the prices recommended; thirdly, the reseller implements the supplier’s recommendations on prices, since in the case of resistance to the supplier’s suggested price policy a vertical agreement is not considered to have been made.

Abstract. Lithuania’s joining of the European Union (EU) opened up the possibility to receive financial support from the EU Cohesion and Structural funds. Establishing a proper system for the management and control of EU financial support has become one of the most important tasks for the Lithuanian Government. Since non-eligible funds must be returned to the European Commission’s account, the control system for EU financial support requires special attention. Since Lithuania entered the European Union, EU financial support has been included in the national budget. Since the budget of the Republic of Lithuania is subject to public financial control, EU financial support must come under public scrutiny as well. A control system for EU financial support was created during the 2004–2006 programming period. However, when defining the activities of the control subjects, insufficient powers were provided to ensure their effective work in the supervision of European Union funds.

Summary. While examining the infringements of Articles 81 and 82 of the Treaty of the European Community (hereinafter referred to as the Treaty) the European Commission bases its actions on the provisions of the Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 of 16 December 2002 on the implementation of the rules on competition laid down in Articles 81 and 82 of the Treaty (hereinafter referred to as the Regulation No. 1/2003). Because of a very wide discretion of the European Commission provided for by the abovementioned legislation, because of the amount of fines which can be imposed on companies which infringe the EC competition rules as well as because of other aspects one may consider whether the proceedings of the EC competition law amount to criminal proceedings, according to which the rights set forth in Article 6 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (hereinafter referred to as the Convention) must be granted to persons accused of a criminal offence.

Summary. Every developed legal system must have a mechanism for testing the legality of measures adopted by its institutions. The European Community, which is a community based on the rule of law, is not an exception, inasmuch as neither its member states nor its institutions can avoid a review of the conformity of their measures with the basic constitutional charter—the Treaty. Otherwise the constitutional principle ubi ius ibi remedium would be infringed and the rights provided to individuals would become merely declaratory. The wording of Article 230(4) imposes limits on the standing of private applicants as it requires the applicant to be directly and individually concerned. These requirements, due to the very narrow and restrictive interpretation in the jurisprudence of the ECJ, are very difficult to meet. Therefore, the rules for standing have long been criticized as violating the principle of effective judicial protection and, in some cases, equivalent to the denial of justice.

Summary. The article starts with the observation of A. F. Chalmers, philosopher of science, that there is neither a common concept of science, nor a common concept of scientific method which could be applied for every scientific branch in every stage of its evolution. The uncertainty of the definition of modern science could be indicated as the first problem in the discussion on the scientific character of law. The second problem arises when one tries to define the concepts of legal science and jurisprudence. The author of the article states that these concepts represent different approaches towards legal research: legal science focuses on value-neutral criteria, ideas, characteristics, considers legal norms as objectively existing social facts. Jurisprudence, in its turn, analyzes legal practice ant its methods “from the inside”, emphasizes legal knowledge, reasonableness, just decisions. According to some European legal scholars whose thoughts are discussed in the article, it is reasonable to indicate the specific branches of theoretical legal sciences, such as, for example, general theory of law, philosophy of law, history of law, law sociology, law and economics, law epistemology, law methodology, law and artificial intelligence studies, as well as general jurisprudential discourse.

Summary. The article aims to analyse the concept of national minority in international law. There is no universally accepted definition of a national minority, for neither international nor regional documents include one. However, common characteristics may be recognized based on the interpretation of certain legal documents and an analysis of legal theory. An analysis of the universal and regional legal documents leads to the same conclusion: they have not succeeded in clearly defining the concept of national minority. However, this analysis also shows that national minorities are identified by objective (language, religion, culture, ethnic group, numbering less than half of the population within a state) and subjective characteristics (will to preserve their culture, traditions, religion, language).

Summary. Accidents at work related to inebriety are a relevant problem in Lithuania. The statistics of the State Labour Inspectorate is very threatening: every fourth person killed at work and every second person killed in building and construction works was inebriated. Previous studies have proved that due to inebriety the possibility to injure oneself increased 10-15 times. In the present article the legal acts regulating the means of the prevention of risks related to inebriety at work are reviewed; the concept of the inebriated employee is analyzed; the problem of insufficient attention to this concept in legal acts is discussed. Legal acts do not include any provisions regarding the situation when an employee’s inebriety is lower than 0.41 per mille. Thus, it is suggested to define such cases in collective agreements. The prevention means established in legal acts could be divided into two groups. The first group includes the means applied for preventing the use of alcohol at work; the second group includes the means for suspending an inebriated employee from work.

Summary. In the present article, the author analyses the patient’s right to healthcare services in another EU Member State. In the Community law, this right is interpreted as the right to receive healthcare services funded by the national health insurance institution in another Member State while patient is insured in his home Member State. The article attempts to explore the content and procedure for the implementation of the patient’s right to healthcare services in other Member States by singling out two aspects—the patient’s right to emergency treatment and planned healthcare (both in-patient and out-patient care). The author analyses pertinent EU legislation. The rendering of healthcare services to persons moving within the Community is regulated by Council Regulations No. 1408/71 and No. 574/72, applied directly in all the Member States. The procedures for the implementation of the said regulations are established by the decisions of the Administrative Commission on Social Security for Migrant Workers of the European Community. However, the patient’s right to healthcare services in other Member States cannot be analysed without reference to the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice.