Polish and Lithuanian members of parliament want to meet again

Polish and Lithuanian parliamentarians want to restore the habit of meetings of Polish-Lithuanian Parliamentary Assembly. Gediminas Kirkilas, the Vice-President of the Parliament of Lithuania, the Chairman of the parliamentary committee for Europe, will talk about it in Warsaw, in the Polish Parliament.

Gediminas Kirkilas went to Poland at the invitation of the Polish parliament deputy speaker Eugeniusz Grzeszczak. Gediminas Kirkilas and Eugeniusz Grzeszczak are co-chairs of the Polish-Lithuanian Parliamentary Assembly. The talks will be about resuming the activity of the Assembly.

The meeting of parliamentarians was planned in the spring of 2014, there was even a detailed programme agreed for it. The final date has not been established, and the meeting did not happen. In recent years, the Parliamentary Assembly have met at least twice a year, alternately in Poland and in Lithuania. The cooling of the relationship was due to the fact that the Lithuanian party stubbornly refused to settle the problems of the Polish minority in Lithuania.

“The resumption of Polish-Lithuanian Parliamentary Assembly, which has not been working since the last term of the parliament, is now the one of our priorities. I hope that we will meet our commitments of the historic Treaty between the Polish Republic and the Republic of Lithuania on Friendly Relations and neighbourly cooperation that on 26 April 1994 was signed by the presidents Algirdas Brazauskas and Lech Wałęsa,” said Gediminas Kirkilas before going to Warsaw.

The treaty was agreed that both parties undertake to respect the international rules and standards relating to the protection of rights of national minorities and persons belonging to the Polish minority in Lithuania, as well as those belonging to the Lithuanian minority in the Polish Republic shall have the right, individually or together with other members of their groups, to freely express, preserve and develop their ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity without any discrimination and in full equality before the law. In 2014 there was the 20th anniversary of the signing of the treaty.

Based on: BNS, own information