Lithuania

Lithuania, which has ratified the Aarhus Convention, scored highly across the EDI pillars and a received a top score overall in the legal index. It scored very well on the Transparency and Justice pillars, and received a good score for the Participation pillar. The public has the right to access environmental information on request, and a wide range of environmental information must be made proactively available. Regarding the Participation pillar, government agencies must provide the public with opportunities to participate at an early stage. They are also required to proactively seek input from the public. However, there are no requirements to make information on these opportunities understandable in nontechnical language. For the Justice pillar, the public enjoys the right to appeal environmental information refusals and to bring a wide array of claims when rights are violated or harms are committed. As outlined here, Lithuania has taken several steps to establish legal rights to environmental democracy.

Visit the Environmental Democracy Index to explore the EDI score.