Lietuva in brief - 2013-05-16

Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius has confirmed that the government is planning to buy a civic helicopter for 60 million litas (17.4 million euros), reports ELTA. “The tender was announced by the previous government. As we reviewed the balances of the European Union aid, we saw that the Conservatives and the Liberals had failed to absorb the projected funds of over 1 billion litas. According to Butkevicius, a part of the funding will be re-allocated from the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of the Science and Education. Finance Minister Rimantas Sadzius in turn has claimed that it would be irrational not to absorb the EU funds. The government is planning to re-allocate 170 million litas from the EU aid which was left unused. The finance minister said that the re-allocation will cover five ministries.

Energy supply security and diversification are very important factors for political independence and for independence from the Eastern mentality of corruption, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said in an interview to the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung. The article says that Lithuanian independence, won from Russia, thanks to the Conservatives’ leader Vytautas Landsbergis and Social Democrat President and Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas, is an important goal of Grybauskaite. According to the interview’s author Klaus Brill, this is the reason why in the upcoming 6 months of the Lithuanian presidency of the European Union, together with the government, Grybauskaite will seek, for example, to terminate the existing Baltic States’ dependence on the Russian gas and power supply.

Minister of Defense Juozas Olekas hopes that by the start of the Lithuanian Presidency of the EU Council they will manage to coordinate all the formalities with Polish and Ukrainian defense ministers on the establishment of joint combat unit brigades, reports ELTA. According to the minister, Lithuania is treating the EU Eastern Partnership program seriously and from the point of view of safety, is trying to include into the security dimension such countries as Ukraine and Moldova.