News

On 15 December in Warsaw, Lithuanian Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Evaldas Ignatavičius, President of European Parliament Jerzy Buzek and European Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs discussed Lithuania’s upcoming Presidency of the Council of the EU. A.Piebalgs was acquainted with Lithuania’s experience of supporting the Belarusian civil society and contribution to the protection of women’s rights in Georgia and Afghanistan.

The meeting was held in Warsaw on 14 December in the margins of an ongoing conference “European Development Days”, which is one of the most important international development cooperation events.

According to E.Ignatavičiaus, future European Union’s development cooperation policy should make better use of the experience of new EU member states, including Lithuania, which was accumulated during the period of their transition to democracy and a market economy. Thus, Lithuania would be better integrated into the EU aid policy processes, the country’s state institutions and non-governmental organizations would have more opportunities to implement EU-funded projects.

The event of the European Commission, the Council of Europe, and this year’s Polish Presidency of the European Union discussed democracy promotion and human rights, climate change, protection of women’s rights and other topical issues.

The conference that brought together more than a thousand participants is called a policy-making “laboratory”, which highlights important initiatives and results, and discusses key areas of development cooperation for the next year: peace, security, democracy, good governance, human rights, etc.

Already the 6th forum is attended by President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, J.Buzek, Presidents of Poland, Georgia and African countries, leaders from international organizations, world’s countries and non-governmental organizations.

This year, 115 development cooperation projects worth 5.3 million Litas were implemented under Lithuania’s development cooperation and democracy promotion programme. Non-governmental organizations implemented more than 70 per cent of these projects, through which Lithuania contributed to the promotion of good governance, democracy, human rights and women’s social engagement in Afghanistan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.