President Dalia Grybauskaitė met with EU member states’ ambassadors accredited to Lithuania. The traditional annual meeting focused on geopolitical and security situation in Europe, reviewed key matters in EU and international politics as well as current affairs in Lithuania.

The last plenary session of 2017 will see Venezuela’s democratic opposition awarded Parliament’s Sakharov Prize while MEPs also debate the state of play in the Brexit negotiations.

MEPs vote next week on recommendations by the inquiry committee looking into the Panama papers. Its report says that some EU countries have not done enough to tackle tax evasion.

President Dalia Grybauskaitė and President Petro Poroshenko chaired the tenth meeting of the Council of Presidents of Lithuania and Ukraine. The meeting focused on the implementation of European reforms, the situation in eastern Ukraine and the region's security, as well as the development of bilateral relations.

“A smooth deployment of NATO’s additional forces in the Baltic states and Poland is the most significant step towards the consolidation of the Alliance’s collective defence after the end of the Cold War,” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Linas Linkevičius at the NATO Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Brussels.

On December 6 Minister of Defence of the Kingdom of the Netherlands Ank Bijleveld-Schouten on a visit in Lithuania and Minister of National Defence Raimundas Karoblis discussed the cooperation of their countries in the framework of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) in defence area, where Lithuania proposes means for simplifying movement of forces in Europe and also strengthening response to cyber-attacks by creating rapid response groups.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania has allocated EUR 50,000 in humanitarian aid to Ukraine. EUR 25,000 in humanitarian assistance to help Ukraine will be transferred to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and another EUR 25,000 will be channelled through the International Organization for Migration. The aim is to support humanitarian response to help people affected by the conflict in Ukraine, responding to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ appeal of 28 November for US$ 146,7 million or 72 per cent of the required funds for the implementation of the Ukraine Humanitarian Response Plan that has been reviewed in 2017.

MEPs will this week deal with issues such as youth employment, tighter cash controls, people living with a disability and the situation in Hungary.

On November 29 the Government of the Republic of Lithuania adopted a resolution to hand over to the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine on a nonreimbursable basis its assets by proprietary rights used by the Lithuanian Armed Forces by entrustment rights. On the basis of the resolution, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence will be given weapons and ammunition that the Lithuanian Armed Forces used before becoming a member of NATO and do not coincide with the calibres used in NATO.

On the margins of the ongoing African Union - European Union summit in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Linas Linkevičius and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Somalia Yusuf Garaad Omar on 30 November signed a Joint Communiqué on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.