Cabinet considers broadcasting its meetings

“The government works openly and has nothing to hide. There is an opinion that government meetings should be also streamed online and that audio and video recordings should be made and stored in the same way as (recordings of) Cabinet sittings are made and stored,” Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis said during the Cabinet’s sitting on Wednesday.

“Also, both government meetings and sittings would be publicly available in various formats and via various information channels,” he added.

The Cabinet approved the respective protocol decision.

Skvernelis said this would require amending the Law on the Government, adding that the amendments could be drafted by October 31.

There has been tension between the government on one side and the media and the opposition on the other side in recent weeks after the recording of the October 3 meeting, in which ministers discussed giving the media free access to registry data but postponed its decision on the issue, was deleted.

After journalists demanded to be given the recording, it turned out that it had been destroyed. The archives of video recordings were later removed from the government’s YouTube channel and from its Facebook page, too.

The rules of procedure of the government provide for recording Cabinet sittings, but say nothing about the recording of its meetings that are held prior to formal sittings.

The rules of procedure of the government office, however, require recording both government sittings and meetings and keeping these recordings in the government office’s archives.