Sunday 22 November 2009

Lithuania defends parents as primary educators

Lithuania is to be admired for standing up to the powers that be and striking a blow for national sovereignty against an attempt by the European Parliament (EP) to condemn their recently approved child-centred legislation. In particular we must admire their willingness to stand firm for parents as the primary educators of their children in the face of an attempt to indoctrinate children and repress parents by trying to impose novel doctrines of human sexuality on their children.

I posted two blogs in September on the EP resolution condemning Lithuania’s newly enacted law and asking the Fundamental Rights Agency to review it. “Slovak MEP defends European Children” and “European Parliament in radical move against member state government”

Slovak MEP Anna Zaborska was quoted at the time as saying "Today a national law from Lithuania which aims to protect minors from sexualisation by society is condemned by the EU institutions. I consider our meeting to be a manipulation of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. This text is not a legally binding instrument. The EU Parliament is ignoring the legitimacy of the national Parliament of a Member State. The EU Parliament also requests an Opinion of the Fundamental Rights Agency, but this Agency has no mandate to assess the legal quality of a national law”.

In response to the unacceptable interference by the European Parliament in its internal affairs the Lithuanian Parliament on 10 November adopted a resolution seeking to overrule the EP resolution. This Lithuanian resolution deals with the illegitimacy of the EP resolution having no Treaty basis thus rendering it illegal, but it is nonetheless a "soft law" measure. This is particularly important as the EP is more powerful now under the Treaty of Lisbon.

The resolution called on the Lithuanian cabinet to file suit by Nov 17th in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg pointing out that the EP resolution lacked legitimacy and demanding that it should be invalidated. The Lithuanian resolution also dismissed the EP resolution as an “unlawful action caused by lack of competences” and “may serve as a dangerous precedent” if not invalidated.

Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
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