The Challenges in application of criminal liability for the spread of hate speech

ENAn ever-increasing proportion of cases of hate speech appear in virtual space, especially in light of today's current events, such as the difference of opinion on the prevention of a past pandemic, the issue of homosexuals in the country or the ongoing war in neighbouring countries, as a result of which not only discussions take place in the virtual environment, but also various statements that can be considered hate speech can often be found. In addition, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (the ECHR), on some issues, requires corrections of the imperfections of the Lithuanian legal regulation, introducing a different and often even opposite approach to the regulation of criminal responsibility for spreading hate speech and its application in Lithuania. As a result, it is necessary to constantly assess and monitor whether Lithuania's position on criminal liability for spreading hate speech still meets international standards and what are the latest problems encountered when applying this criminal liability. Therefore, the purpose of the research is to analyse the peculiarities and problems of the Lithuanian legal regulation of criminal liability for spreading of the hate speech and its application in case law in the context of the case law of the ECHR. So, the tasks of the research are based on two main area of this analysis, i.e. the challenges in Lithuanian criminal law of qualifying the spread of hate speech as a criminal offense, the challenges arising in Lithuanian case law regarding the assessment of dangerousness, incriminating criminal liability for spreading hate speech, and together these issues are evaluated in the context of the case law of the ECHR.The analysis of this article substantiated the difficulties that arise not only in classifying the dissemination of hate speech as a criminal act, especially in assessing the evaluation of the content of hate speech and the incrimination of the qualifying features of publicity, but also significant challenges in the case law of Lithuanian courts, when the assessment of the dangerousness of the criminal offense for spreading hate speech is based on four essential criteria, however, they are often given different evaluative weight, or even one or the other is not evaluated at all or is evaluated contrary to even the international case law of the ECHR. Keywords: hate speech, criminal liability, hate crimes, seriousness of crime. [From the publication]