There’s a popular saying in Lithuania: haste makes waste. Rushing blindly to show off before Western masters may result in not being a high achiever but making a fool out of oneself before foreigners and fellow-countrymen instead, lrytas.lt writes.

Arguably the biggest Lithuania’s blooper was in 2004 when the Seimas (with its tenure coming to an end) spent a week to ‘consider’ and ratify the so-called Constitution for Europe.

No referendums, no time-wasting activities! After all, the most important thing for Lithuania is to be the first to bless the document, perform well before the mighty of the West, and wipe the noses of the EU’s newcomers.

But the joy didn’t last long; the constitution was buried by the same mighty of the West through national referendums.

The times are new, just like the Government. But the tendency to step on the same rake remains.

In this case the rake is another important document – the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA). It is dedicated to strengthen the protection of intellectual property and fight the plague of the 21st century – piracy.

At the end of January, ACTA was signed by 22 members of the EU, including Lithuania, obviously.

Arūnas Dambrauskas, Plenipotentiary Minister to Japan, received his authorization to sign the agreement on January 23 by the decree of PM Andrius Kubilius. On the same day President Dalia Grybauskaitė approved the authorization.

It seemed everything was supposed to go smoothly – the Government would submit the agreement to the president and she, in turn, would submit it to the Seimas for ratification. Maybe it would have, if it hadn’t been for the fuss which unfortunately didn’t begin in Lithuania.

Europe’s politicians and common people began pointing at those parts of ACTA that can pose a threat to the freedom and privacy of citizens, give anti-piracy institutions too much power to track people online and collect data about them.

That’s why protests broke out in the streets of Europe, which already had a tense atmosphere.

With all this happening the Lithuanian government looked like they fell out their tree. One of the first to wake up was Remigijus Šimašius, Minister of Justice. He said that we had to make sure that ACTA would not allow the Government to track people and hinder the development of education should it provide a much stricter copyright protection of new technologies.

The confused Ministry of Foreign Affairs tried to object by pointing out that the Ministry of Justice, just like the other ones, participated in the consideration of the document and approved it.

But Šimašius replied that this wasn’t the case. And so did Kazys Starkevičius, Minister of Agriculture, who got accused by the Greens claiming that the agreement would allow top cultivate genetically modified organisms in Lithuania.

More and more high-ranking officials began backing down. President Grybauskaitė said she would not hurry to submit ACTA to the Seimas, and PM Kubilius – that the Government would consider its nature.

It turned out that ACTA hadn’t been mentioned in the Government’s meetings and the PM himself didn’t even have an opinion regarding it. So the Government finally ‘considered’ the document the day before yesterday and repeated it would not rush to complete the ratification process.

It’s unclear how these discussions will end. Some politicians and experts claim that the document truly is threatening the right to privacy and the freedom of speech, some – that this agreement contains nothing new that hasn’t already been established in Lithuania’s and the EU’s legal acts.

In any case, these issues are very important to Lithuania.

But there’s little room for doubt that our politicians will first of all listen to what’s happening in the West instead of discussing the issue with the society.

In other words, this ‘discussion’ may become yet another demonstrative show, first and foremost aimed at foreign spectators, just like the current Let’s Battle Youth Unemployment campaign.

All of a sudden every Governmental institution is striving to decrease the number of unemployed youth. What happened that near the end of their tenure the ruling politicians suddenly noticed that the youth constituted quite a large number of unemployed people in Lithuania?

The ‘campaign’ began after the EU summit where President Grybauskaitė had to swallow a bitter pill.

Juan Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, mentioned Lithuania among the countries where the numbers of unemployed youth were so big that they needed special help from Brussels.

No wonder when Grybauskaitė came back she scolded publicly Donatas Jankauskas, Minister of Social Security and Labour, and ordered all institutions to focus on youth unemployment.

But is it worth waiting for improvements if the Government notices problems only when they are pinpointed by foreign countries, and the country’s international image is more important to them than public opinion?

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