The Ministry of Environment is finalising a draft government decree providing for auctions for fishing areas to be organised electronically. The new procedure will enter into force when the Government adopts this Decree.

The Law on Amateur Fishing provides that the manager of a body of water shall take decisions on the granting of the right to use a fishing area, and discusses the cases in which this decision must be taken by means of an auction. Authorised representatives of legal persons, as well as natural persons or their authorised representatives, may participate in the auction. The highest bidder wins the auction. He/she undertakes to pay the rent annually to the account of the municipality in which the water body is located.

Currently, such auctions are held live, with persons having to appear at the auction venue. It is planned that later this year auctions will be held using information technology tools on the electronic bidding and auction portal www.evarzytynes.lt and www.eaukcionai.lt

This new procedure will increase publicity and facilitate participation in auctions. Auctions will be organised by the managers of public water bodies, i.e. the National Land Service, and for water bodies located in towns and cities by municipalities.

After the auction is over and the water body manager has decided to grant the right to use the fishing area to a person, he/she applies to the Environmental Protection Agency via the Environmental Permit Information System (ALIS), which issues a fishing area permit. The user of the fishing area acquires the right to organise recreational fishing in a given water body for 10 years and to collect fees for recreational fishing permits, as well as certain obligations: to stock the water body, to organise surveys of the water body's fish stocks, to issue recreational fishing permits, and to erect information signs on the shoreline of the water body.

At present, 545 fishing permits have been issued.