President Grybauskaitė: Prosecutors must protect state and respect human rights

The Prosecutors’ Trade Union unites prosecutors of every level, its representatives are members of every most important prosecution commission and working group.

According to the president, the prosecution system recently experienced significant changes. After the twofold reduction of managing staff, the number of prosecutors working directly with cases increased. There were 190 heads before the reform, some of whom had only 3 prosecutors under them. The Prosecutor’s Office started working more effectively, last year it successfully investigated the biggest number of crimes in the history of independent Lithuania.

“Lithuania cannot have the greatest number of prosecutors in the European Union. The country needs honest and professional prosecutors who respect human rights. The Prosecutor’s Office must change and eliminate criminal prosecution of the Soviet era. Prosecutors have to see not only the plain law but its contents too. Officers have reputation and people’s trust in their own hands,” the president said.

According to the president, the goal of the prosecutors’ self government should not be protection of their privileges, but improvement of the prosecution’s activities. The Constitution ensures prosecutor’s independence but does not give freedom to corruption and incompetence.

The president also said that the trade union must take responsibility and devote more attention to raising prosecutors’ qualification and it has to be every prosecutor’s duty.

Grybauskaitė also noted the need of change assessing prosecutors’ activities. In the last three years only one of them was evaluated negatively. According to the president, their evaluation has to be realistic and not just a formality.