Tourism Law in Europe

10 preparation of Lithuania’s Progress Strategy in order to identify the goals of the tourism policy progress, forms the tourism policy, organises, coordinates and control its implementation, prepares the national development programmes implementing goals of the tourism policy progress, provides the proposals to the Government concerning the resorts and development of the resorts territories, participates in the activity of tourism international organisation and other functions indicated in the legal acts. The one of the effective managements of public policy measures is mechanism for consultation with the interested parties. Consultation with interested parties in Lithuania is ensured through the rules regulating legislative process. However, in certain area specific consultation mechanisms are established. One of these examples is tourism. The peculiarity of mechanism is justified taking into account the complexity of tourism which encompasses various, and sometime concurrent, interests and the necessity to balance these various interests, e.g. public interests to save environment and freedom to engage in commercial activity, the latter freedom and public interest to protect weaker party, in particular interests of the professionals and tourists as consumers. Therefore, the Tourism Council (the Council) as the specific forum for the discussions is established under the Law on Tourism. It comes under the Ministry of Economy and Innovation, representative of which chairs the Council. Consequently, the consultation forum is organised at the ministry level. This body is consisted of representatives from business and other associations, Lithuanian municipalities association, state institutions. Here, not less than half members shall be members delegated from associations. Therefore, the Council is the effective channel for views changing and reflections from the interested parties. The Council meetings are organised depending on demand; however, the regulation requires that no less than one meeting per quarter in a year will be organised. Therefore, at least four meetings per year shall be ensured. The main function of the Council is to advice to the Minister of Economy and Innovation concerning issues related to the tourism policy and legal regulation. As for example, this Council discussed some issues related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Especially, this mechanism for the discussions of issues concerning pandemic were used in the spring of 2020 (three meetings were organised in May and June). However, as it can be seen from the