Your Excellencies Ambassadors of Lithuania,
I am genuinely pleased to meet with you at the Parliament of Lithuania. It is a privilege to welcome you to the annual conference and extend my wish that your meetings serve as an inspiration for your new endeavours and projects.
I would like to take this opportunity to share a number of ideas concerning the parliamentary dimension of the implementation of foreign policy.
I dare say that today, regardless of the fact that we are already a NATO and EU member state, we still face a rather complicated task. While Lithuania’s national interests remain the same as enshrined in our Constitution, our foreign policy goals are in need of an overhaul and we have to take in and promote the new European values. The successful accomplishment of these tasks alone will prove to others and to ourselves that we have indeed attained a mature democracy.
This is where the role of the Seimas comes in as a particularly important one. As there are no longer any clear dividing lines between internal and foreign policy matters, understanding of our internal policy is crucially important. This understanding should inform the process of setting new foreign policy priorities based on the national interests, as well as the identification of problems, and definition of tasks. It is a difficult challenge.
The President of the Republic has made a particularly pertinent evaluation of the present situation in his annual address claiming that Lithuania faces an identity crisis. This is indisputably one of the major factors influencing our foreign policy. Lithuania’s identity, once defined within the internal policy framework, will equally shape Lithuania’s identity in the international community. The mission of the Seimas is to combine the two distinct dimensions by formulating a unified policy and defining the role Lithuania should perform in the foreign policy sector. It would probably be wise to instil in the international community an opinion that Lithuania, though small in size, is a genuinely democratic state with a strong economy and political clout.
During the EU integration process we spared no effort in highlighting there would be more of Europe in Lithuania. This statement is no longer sufficient today. Now, we need more Europe not just in our country, but also in our direct neighbourhood, and, indeed, throughout the Central European region at large, including Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Russia. The dissemination of democratic values should become a long-term objective of Lithuania as an important regional player (May I mention here that for this reason the new Parliamentary Cooperation Centre was established in the Seimas and my colleague Andrius Kubilius will present the Centre to you). Thus, regional leadership should go hand in hand with setting value-grounded objectives, and they primarily should be reflected in the decisions adopted by the Seimas.
Successful accession to the EU and NATO should pave the way to the accomplishment by our state of the following tasks:
1) Lithuania’s full integration into the said and other international organisations and participation in their work on a par with their other members;
2) enhancement of the Euroatlantic alliance in all possible ways, as well as increased interaction between the EU and NATO;
3) active engagement in the processes of political and economic cooperation between the EU and Russia as well as aid in bridging the gap between the EU and the Kaliningrad Region;
4) strengthening of the solidarity between the Baltic and Nordic states; fostering partnership with Poland;
5) active support to the democratisation of Belarus, and to international integration of Ukraine, Moldova and other post-soviet states.
These objectives and tasks are our principal priorities and they will always meet with support in the Seimas and will be manifest in the parliament’s decisions.
The creation of the scheme allowing the Seimas to participate in the EU affairs was informed by the desire to ensure that the state comes up with a unanimous position on draft EU laws, with the formulation of the national position resulting from cooperation between the national parliament and the government and manifest in the their respective decisions. Today we can conclude we were successful in making sure the Government informs the Seimas in full detail on the draft EU legislative acts at a very early stage. Thus, the parliament has an opportunity to formulate and declare its own position. It should be highlighted that the Government’s negotiations in the Council are based on the opinion expressed by the Seimas, and, if need may be, there is further coordination and alignment of the position of the Government with that of the Parliament. For the time being, we have no problems in terms of solving the EU issues insofar as cooperation between the Seimas and the Government is concerned, although, of course, there are no limits to perfection.
The internationalization of politics resulting from globalisation, an increasing overlap between the jurisdictions of the international and national law, and greater importance of international organisations and regional cooperation, creates new opportunities for parliaments to become more actively engaged in foreign policy matters. Parliaments have to seek ways and instruments allowing them both to influence these processes and take an active part therein. The so-called parliamentary diplomacy has gained popularity. Today, international contacts of MPs are frequently perceived as an additional diplomatic channel that ensures support for governmental initiatives and promotes a wider international understanding and support. I would propose to make full use of these opportunities.
Equally to other EU’s national parliaments, the Seimas faces one of the most important objectives in the international arena, namely ensuring the legitimacy of the EU. It is imperative to strive for that by encouraging all endeavours of bilateral and multilateral interparliamentary cooperation and by transferring more powers to the existing institutions of interparliamentary cooperation. Therefore, the conferences of speakers of national parliaments of the EU defined the key objectives for this kind of cooperation in the European Union, including:
a) reinforcement of exchange of information, in order to primarily reinforce the parliamentary scrutiny;
b) reinforcement of the competence of national parliaments in EU matters, in particular through the implementation of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, also in the area of transposition of EU legislation;
c) further enhancement of the democratic legitimacy of the European Union.
Finally, may I highlight one more important function of the Seimas. I am referring to the dissemination of information and to educational activities of the parliament. We should not forget that foreign policy and security issues are usually underestimated by ordinary citizens who think that this is too far away from their agendas and does not directly influence their lives. We encountered this problem during the integration period, and we continue to feel this problem today, when we need to successfully attain the set objectives and explain the implications of Euroatlantic cooperation to the general public. Contacts between the Seimas and the diplomats need to be reinforced to make sure a positive image of Lithuania is impinged in the society and in the international community. This will help us immensely in reaching our foreign policy objectives and gaining public support.
Thank you.
