Open registers of beneficial owners, effective whistle-blower protection and rules for intermediaries are a must to fight tax evasion, say MEPs.

President Dalia Grybauskaitė attends the European Council meeting where discussions on enhancing EU‘s resilience to possible financial shocks are held and proposals on the Eurozone’s reforms, tabled by the European Commission, are discussed.

In light of geopolitical challenges and a changing security environment, the European Union started a process of closer cooperation in security and defense. The leaders of 25 EU member states, including President Dalia Grybauskaitė, adopted a decision to establish PESCO – a framework for closer cooperation, outlined in the Lisbon Treaty, Article 46, that will mobilize EU member states’ forces for countering threats.

The Seimas approved the state budget for 2018, which will focus on reducing poverty, ensuring national security, promoting entrepreneurship and productive investment, and increasing municipal budgets and municipal financial independence. The motion was passed by 84 votes in favour with 29 against and 15 abstentions.

The Seimas adopted amendments to the Law on Immovable Property Tax, thus providing for progressive taxation of immovable property belonging by the right of ownership to or being acquired by natural persons for non-commercial purposes. The aforementioned immovable property means housing, gardens, garages, animal barns, greenhouses, farm buildings, ancillary farm buildings as well as science, religion and recreation facilities (premises), fish-farming and engineering structures. The amendments were adopted by 58 votes in favour, 6 against, and 29 abstentions.

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.