Immigration

Lithuania could take in 250 refugees as a voluntary contribution to the European Union's efforts to alleviate the Mediterranean migrant crisis, Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius says. According to him, the number of 250 refugees, which the Lithuanian president recently mentioned, matches the countr...

Lithuania could take in up to 250 refugees, President Dalia Grybauskaitė says.

Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius says the number of refugees that could be relocated to Lithuania will become clear after the meeting of the Council of the Interior Ministers next week. The prime minister added that the number could be up to 40.

The meeting of the European Union's (EU) Justice and Home Affairs Council next week should establish the number of refugees Lithuania will have to accept, Interior Minister Saulius Skvernelis says.

Recently, I was asked by radio journalist Aurimas Perednis what I thought about the issue of illegal migrants flooding the EU's southern states. No one in Europe disputes one thing: the current state of affairs is dangerous and cannot be left to run its own course.

Lithuania's unwillingness to accept refugees that are flooding Southern European countries shows a lack of solidarity with other EU member states, Lithuanian EU Commissioner Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis says.

The Lithuanian Seimas Committee on Foreign Affairs has stated that solidarity to distribute refugees among European Union (EU) member states should be understood as a voluntary contribution based on a country's capabilities.

Lithuania's foreign policy is not without some ambivalence. Vilnius aspires to be a regional leader and set an example to other small countries, Lithuania demands to be treated as a respected full-fledged member of the European Union, NATO and the international community. Its own actions, however, d...

EU member states should be given the right to decide themselves whether to accept refugees from Greece and Italy and how may of them to accept, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė says.

The European Commission on Wednesday suggested relocating up to 710 refugees to Lithuania in a move aimed at resolving the Mediterranean migrant crisis.

Mandatory refugee quotas for EU member states would run counter to legal practice, therefore, such decisions should be made on a voluntary basis, Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Linas Linkevičius says.

At the EU General Affairs Council meeting on 19 May in Brussels, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Linas Linkevičius discussed progress in implementing measures to tackle migratory flows in the Mediterranean Sea region adopted at a special meeting of the European Council on 23 April 2015.

Accepting refugees is not the only way to contribute to the resolution of the existing refugee crisis, and the allocated quotas are still an issue "on paper", Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Linas Linkevičius says.

Kalle Laanet, the chairman of the Estonian parliament's Constitutional Committee, says the question for Estonia must not be whether the country should receive refugees, but how it should be done, The Baltic Times reports.

The European Commission has suggested moving 207 refugees to Lithuania as part of the resolution of the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean Sea, the European Commission Representation in Lithuania says.

The European Commission's forecast of a dramatic decline in Lithuania's population is based on wrong and too short historical data, Swedbank Lithuania's chief economist said on Wednesday.

Lithuania is "not enthusiastic" about the European Commission's proposal to introduce quotas for EU member states to accept a certain number of migrants from Africa, the country's Permanent Representative to the EU Raimundas Karoblis says.

Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius says he does not know how many immigrants Lithuania could accept if the European Commission's plan on migration quotas is implemented. According to the prime minister, immigrants have a huge effect on a country's economy.

Following the UK Conservatives' victory in Thursday's general elections, Prime Minister David Cameron will have to keep his promise to call a referendum on the country's EU membership, and the immigration policy is likely to be tightened, Lithuanian political scientists say.

Vitaly Mansky, a Russian documentary filmmaker, knows exactly when he decided to establish a bolthole outside the Russian Federation. It was the spring of 2014, and Mansky was in Spain for a film festival, watching news in his hotel room. An anchor at one of the Kremlin-controlled news stations repo...