European Court of Human Rights rejects complaint over Lithuanian government’s withheld audio recording

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has dismissed a complaint by two journalists over the Lithuanian government’s refusal to provide an audio recording of a cabinet meeting, ruling that the lack of personal accountability for officials did not violate their rights to an effective remedy or freedom of expression.

The Strasbourg-based court stated on Thursday that the complaint, filed by Rita Miliūtė and Vilma Danauskienė, was “manifestly ill-founded” and declared it inadmissible. The ECHR found that national courts had allowed the journalists to properly defend their case and that the European Convention on Human Rights did not require personal liability for state officials under the Administrative Offenses Code.

According to the ECHR, the audio recording was automatically deleted from the server after two days without a specific decision. The refusal to provide the recording stemmed from collective actions by the Government Chancellery, not the decision of a single official. The court noted that the lack of national regulations and the Chancellery’s practices at the time contributed to the situation. It also highlighted that less than a month after the refusal, the government initiated legal amendments requiring cabinet meetings to be recorded and live-streamed online.

The journalists had previously taken their case to Lithuania’s Supreme Court, which in October 2022 rejected their complaint against former Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis, his advisor Tomas Beržinskas, and then-Government Chancellor Algirdas Stončaitis. The Supreme Court ruled that none of the officials had access to the requested information. In a separate 2020 ruling, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania acknowledged that the government had violated the journalists’ rights by deleting the requested recording but stated that restoring the files was technically impossible.

The dispute began when the government refused to provide the audio recording of a cabinet meeting held on October 3, 2018, during which a proposal to allow journalists to use registry data without charge was discussed and rejected. The journalists also filed a constitutional complaint, which the Constitutional Court declined to review, citing existing provisions in the Administrative Offenses Code that allow for accountability in cases of withheld information. Following the legal dispute, the government amended laws in January and May 2019 to make cabinet meetings public.