Lietuva in brief - 2012-05-17

The European Commission has announced it will restore paying EU financial support from the European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund to Lithuania, reports ELTA. The payments, worth 163 million euros, were temporary suspended in February 2012 due to findings of the National Audit Office of Lithuania. It found some discrepancies in the projects under implementation. “A temporary suspension of paying EU funds did not harm implementation of the project - they were being funded with money from the budget,” Minister of Finance Ingrida Simonyte said.

In 2011, marriage in Lithuania lasted 13.2 years on average, a slight increase from 2010 when it held on for 13 years, reports ELTA. In 2011, a total of 10,300 divorces were administered in Lithuania, a 3 percent increase from the previous year. From 2007 to 2011, the divorce rate remained unchanged with 3 cases of divorce per 1,000 residents. In the year from 2010 to 2011, there were 54 divorces per 100 marriages, while in 2007 the rate stood at 49. Last year, all in all, 10,300 babies were born outside marriage, which accounts for 30 percent of all births in the period. In 2007, it made up 29 percent. Among the European Union member states, the biggest rates of babies born of unwed parents in 2010 was registered in Estonia (59 percent), Sweden and Bulgaria (both 54 percent), while the Greek rate was the lowest of all, a bit above 6 percent.

The Lithuanian electorate likes the Social Democrats for their proposals to apply tax deductions, the Conservatives for their work on energy independence, the Labor Party for their wish to promote small and medium size business, the party Order and Justice for promises to seek social justice and the Liberals’ Movement for defining economic freedom and competitiveness, reports ELTA. These trends were revealed in a poll conducted by Spinter Tyrimai in April. The respondents were asked to name the most important values declared by different political parties in Lithuania. Professor Alvidas Lukosaitis from the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University says that the poll has shown that Lithuanians are not lost in the ocean of political parties as they are rather conscious of the values of parties and can differentiate them. The Social Democrats, who are in the opposition now, appeal to voters for their promises to apply tax deductions to business and residents. The poll has shown that tax incentives are the most attractive feature of the Social Democrats, valued by 36.2 percent of those polled.