Center-right parties look east

VILNIUS - On April 30, leaders of the European People’s Party and associated center-right parties planned to set up an informal network of European Union (EU) Eastern Partnership policy supporters titled ‘Europe Goes East’ (EER), reports ELTA.
The event was to be organized by the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party (TS-LKD) and Ronald Reagan House.

“Celebrating a successful decade of the accession to the European Union, we are convinced that Europe has to expand east. Therefore, at a special conference we plan to discuss the challenges posed by Russian President [Vladimir] Putin’s regime and our, the center-right parties, response to it. We also plan to establish an informal cooperation network among center-right parties, members of the European People’s Party and associated members, from those countries, which as we did, have broken out from the empire,” said Andrius Kubilius, chairman of the TS-LKD, the leader of the Seimas opposition, ahead of the meeting.

The conference was expected to be attended by Mario David, vice president of the European People’s Party; Jacek Protasiewicz, vice president of the European Parliament; David Bakradze, Georgia’s leader of the opposition and Giorgi Baramidze, vice speaker of the Georgian Parliament; Vlad Filat, chair of Moldova’s Liberal Democratic Party; Iryna Herashchenko, the representative of the Ukrainian Party Udar, and representatives of other parties that belong to the European People’s Party or associated parties from Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Georgia, and Lithuania.