President Gitanas Nausėda sworn in on July 12 left for neighboring Poland for his first official visit. Regional security and defense priorities, as well as energy independence issues, were discussed at the meeting with President Andrzej Duda.

MEPs vote on the candidate for the president of the European Commission on Tuesday 16 July.

German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who was nominated for the post by the European Council, will outline her programme and discuss it with MEPs from 9.00 CET. MEPs will vote on her candidacy at 18.00 CET.

In order to become Commission President, von der Leyen must secure the support of an absolute majority of MEPs (as of today she must get at least 374 votes). The vote will be a secret paper ballot.

Although she has the backing of EU leaders and is a member of the political party that won most seats in the European elections, von der Leyen was not a lead candidate, a fact criticised by many MEPs.

Political groups have already subjected von der Leyen to tough questioning about her plans for the Commission.

If she fails to win a majority, the European Council would have to put forward another candidate.

Following May’s elections, one of the first tasks of the new, directly-elected European Parliament is the election of the next European Commission President.

Once this new president has been approved, work starts on setting up the new Commission. Parliament’s committees will hold hearings with each of the commissioners-designate to assess their suitability for the portfolio to which they are assigned, before MEPs vote on the Commission as a whole.

Click below to watch the debate and the vote on the new Commission President live in Parliament on 16 July from 9.00 CET.

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www.europarl.europa.eu

The Lithuanian-coordinated project of developing the European Union Cyber Rapid Response Teams (CRRTs) is well underway. Representatives of European Union member states participating in the projects met at the Ministry of National Defence on July 12 exchanged ideas and discussed the common cyber toolkit to be developed.

Dear People of Lithuania! Your Excellencies, President Dalia Grybauskaitė, Valdas Adamkus, Vytautas Landsbergis! Mr. Speaker and Distinguished Members of the Seimas! Dear Guests!

The Seimas adopted the Law on European political parties and European political foundations and the amendments to the Law on the Central Electoral Commission (drafts No XII-4481(3) and No XIIP-3241(2)), which will allow the registration of European political parties and European political foundations in Lithuania. As many as 86 Members of the Seimas voted in favour of the framework law act and 4 parliamentarians abstained.

The annual session of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) held in Luxembourg on 3–8 July 2019 turned out to be highly productive for the Lithuanian delegation. The session adopted a resolution on energy security in the OSCE region presented by Rūta Miliūtė, Member of the Seimas. In addition, thanks to its enormous and pooled efforts, the delegation managed to achieve another significant victory in countering Russia’s attempt to rewrite and monopolise the history of World War II and to discredit the statehood of the countries once affected by the Soviet occupation. The resolution under a politically correct title Combating xenophobia, aggressive nationalism and intolerance was clearly politically motivated and was directed against the Baltic and other countries, who call into question the role of the USSR in World War II in general, and its occupation policy, in particular.

“We welcome the decision of the United States of America to increase the number of U.S. troops in Poland — this step is of extraordinary importance in strengthening deterrence in our region. However, we have to keep working on solving the issues of air defence and rapid deployment of allied forces into the Baltic region side by side with the U.S. and the Alliance,” Minister of National Defence Raimundas Karoblis said today in Gdansk, Poland, at a meeting with the Helsinki Commission of the U.S. Congress. The U.S. Government agency analyses issues of strengthening security and provides recommendations on the matter, as well as works on strengthening the security and defence cooperation of the U.S. and European countries.

The newly-elected MEPs met for their first plenary session on 2-4 July, during which they elected a new president and voted on the size of the parliamentary committees.

Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis has met with outgoing Latvian Ambassador Einars Semanis to thank him for his personal contribution to the development of the bilateral fraternal relations in the political, economic and cultural fields.

On Wednesday, all 14 European Parliament Vice-Presidents were elected in three rounds of voting for a two-and-a-half year term.