Lietuva in brief - 2010-12-09

The visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Poland is of a great importance not only to Poland, but to the whole Baltic region, Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius said at a press conference on Sunday after the meeting of Baltic and Polish prime ministers, reports ELTA. The Lithuanian prime minister emphasized the dynamic relationship between Russia and Poland, the efforts to achieve unity on historical matters which, according to Kubilius, is also important for the region. The parties declared their intention to actively cooperate in the energy sector. “Talks on the cooperation in the energy sector confirmed that the four countries share common views and interests,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk pointed out. “There were talks on how to speed up the work on joint energy projects, as well as on the construction of Visaginas nuclear power plant,” the Polish prime minister said. The prime ministers also discussed the EU budget project and expressed the opinion that it would be unwise to increase it at the moment because this would lead to increases in taxes.

At the beginning of December, the Lithuanian Labor Exchange registered 300,600 jobseekers, which accounted for 13.9 percent of the total working age population, reports ELTA. The number of jobseekers has remained unchanged since the beginning of this year. Director of the Lithuanian Labor Exchange Mindaugas Petras Balasaitis stated that the labor market has seen a fall in unemployment since July. It shows that the situation on the market is stabilizing, though the long-term unemployment grew by almost 2.5 times this year, Balasaitis added. According to the Exchange, in November, 20,400 jobseekers applied to territorial labor exchanges. “Employers registered 15,700 vacancies in November, a doubling, year-on-year. More people were employed and more jobseekers (6,900 in total) were sent to the active labor market policy measures,” the head of the Exchange said. On Dec. 1, the most working-age residents were registered on local labor exchanges at the district municipalities of Ignalina (19.5 percent), Mazeikiai (19.2 percent) and Salcininkai (19.0 percent).