euro|topics - Lithuania blocks EU treaty with Russia

04/07/2009

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Main focus of Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Lithuania blocks EU treaty with Russia

For years the EU has been trying to sign a new partnership and cooperation agreement with Russia. First Poland blocked the agreement, but once the dispute over Polish meat exports was settled it seemed there was nothing to prevent its signing. Now, however, Lithuania is blocking the negotiations because Russia has failed to deliver oil supplies in the amount agreed on.

Le Figaro - France

"Relations with the powerful Russian neighbour are stuttering along," states Pierre Avril. "For two years Poland blocked the opening of talks on a continent-wide rapprochement on the grounds that Moscow had put an embargo on its farm produce. And now that Warsaw has agreed to lift its veto, Lithuania steps in, with a mixed bag of accusations, claiming that Russia is blocking the delivery of oil to its only refinery at Mazeiku, is destabilising the Georgian regime, and is refusing to investigate disappearances of Lithuanian citizens in Russia in the 1990s. ... Although some states, like the Netherlands, are willing to strengthen calls for greater legal 'cooperation' from Moscow, most of the EU's 27 member states will not go too far." (29/04/2008)

Süddeutsche Zeitung - Germany

The newspaper disapproves of the Lithuanians blocking "the EU's most important foreign policy project". "After all, 26 of the 27 EU states have now agreed that common interests are to take precedence over the reservations of individual nations regarding Moscow. This gives us hope. Now it's up to Lithuania to clear the way for a treaty. It's understandable that other EU states are putting pressure on Vilnius to give up its stance because even the Lithuanian government must realise that so far its blockade tactics may have served nationalist sentiment but they won't solve the problem with Russia. On the contrary, if Lithuania isolates itself within the EU, Moscow won't take it seriously as a negotiating partner. If on the other hand Lithuania sits at the negotiating table as part of the powerful European Union much can be achieved for the country." (29/04/2008)

Postimees - Estonia

Erkki Bahovski expresses sympathy for the Lithuanians' blockade strategy: "Repairs are allegedly still being carried out on the pipeline supplying the Lithuanian oil refinery in Mažeikiai. One should also bear in mind that the Kremlin employed a similar rhetoric when Poland boycotted the agreement over a ban on Polish meat exports [imposed by Russia]: little problems shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of a major agreement and no one should let themselves be guided by narrow-minded self-interest. This time Moscow has made demands of its own: the protection of the Russian minorities in Estonia and Latvia is to be established in the treaty. So which side is defending its own narrow-minded interests and sabotaging an agreement?" (28/04/2008)

» To the complete press review of Tuesday, April 29, 2008

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