Yearbook 2010
Lithuania. After a GDP decline of close to 15 per cent
last year, the economy reversed during the second quarter
with growth of just over one per cent. The upturn continued
during the third quarter, but was lower than expected.
However, the government continued with severe budget
savings to reduce the budget deficit, so that Lithuania can
be approved for transition to the euro in 2014. But the plan
to gradually increase the retirement age to lower costs in
the long term failed. The protests were strong and
Parliament rejected the proposal. Some members of the
government parties felt that the people had enough of
financial hardship and they voted no.
Also in foreign policy there were contradictions in the
state management. Foreign Minister Vygauda's Usackas ended
up in conflict with President Dalia Grybauskaite and
resigned at the beginning of the year. He had tried to
downplay information that Lithuania had released two secret
prisons where the US intelligence service CIA flew suspected
terrorists for questioning.
According to
COUNTRYAAH, the President and the outgoing Foreign Minister also
disagreed on Lithuania's relationship with Belarus. The
minister was critical of Grybauskaite's efforts to approach
the dictator Aljaksandr Lukasjenka's regime. Lukashenka was
invited to Lithuania's 20th anniversary in March by the
Declaration of Independence, which was much debated. In
October, the Grybauskaite made a visit to Minsk, the first
of a Lithuanian head of state in Belarus. Her message was
that the EU wanted the Belarusian elections in December to
be free and fair. The approach to Belarus was an attempt to
attract the country to increased cooperation with the EU, at
a time when the Belarusian-Russian relationship was frosty.
In May, conflict around a Pride parade in Vilnius, which
was first granted permission, was subsequently banned and
then allowed again. About 400 people participated, guarded
by twice as many police officers, as there is a strong
resistance to homosexuals in Lithuanian society. Swedish
Union Minister Birgitta Ohlsson spoke in conjunction with
the parade.
Former Prime Minister and President Algirdas Brazauskas
died in June, aged 77. He was leader of the Lithuanian
Communist Party during the Soviet era and was at the
forefront of the party's break with Moscow in 1989, of great
importance for the liberation of Lithuania and the Baltics
and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
During the year, Lithuania's difficulties in handling the
memory of the Holocaust were clarified, which meant that
around 200,000 Jews were murdered in the country. In the
autumn, Parliament debated unsuccessfully the unresolved
issue of compensation for property taken from the Jews
during the Nazi era and even the Soviet era. In November,
high-level Holocaust denial was revealed. A historian
employed by the Department of the Interior published an
article in which he described the Holocaust as a legend of
six million murdered Jews. Ambassadors from seven countries,
including Sweden, sent a sharply worded protest letter to
i.a. President. The official left his post, and the Minister
of the Interior withdrew from the article, explaining that
it did not express the Ministry's position.
Lithuania and Sweden agreed during the year that an
electric cable should be laid through the Baltic between the
two countries and be completed in 2016. The connection goes
by the name Nordbalt.
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