On the occasion of the 700th anniversary of Vilnius, President Gitanas Nausėda met with heads of European cities.

On Thursday 26 January at 10.30, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog will address Parliament during the plenary session in Brussels, to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

On January 16 the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopted legislation addressing measures for a high common level of cybersecurity across the EU to further increase resilience and incident response capabilities of the public and private sectors and the whole EU. The new TIS2 directive replaces the TIS directive regarding network and IT security which was transferred into the national legislation of Lithuania in 2018.

According to the data on Community support to Ukraine’s energy sector from the Emergency Response Coordination Centre of the European Commission (ERCC), Lithuania is the EU Member State that has delivered the largest amount of generators and transformers to Ukraine. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Lithuanian municipalities, NGOs and energy companies have handed over 824 generators and 267 transformers to Ukraine. According to preliminary estimates, Lithuania’s assistance to Ukraine’s energy sector reaches EUR 6 million.

Minister of Transport and Communications Marius Skuodis is leaving this Sunday for a meeting with his two Baltic counterparts in Tallinn, where joint Baltic projects and implementation of the European railway link Rail Baltica are to be discussed. The minister will invite his colleagues from Latvia and Estonia to start passenger train services from Vilnius to Riga and Tallinn even before the construction of Rail Baltica.

Starting a working visit to Poland on Wednesday, Minister of Transport and Communications Marius Skuodis met with Catherine Trautmann, the European Coordinator for Rail Baltica, to discuss the progress and implementation of this European standard-gauge railway project in Lithuania.

The Ministry of Transport and Communications is launching a kindness campaign #DviratisUkrainai — from 17 January to 11 March, all the residents of Lithuania are invited to donate new and used bicycles (without major defects) for both adults and children to the people of Ukraine. Ukrainians also need bicycle accessories and other parts — helmets, vests, reflectors, lights and trunks.

Last year, 120 people died on Lithuanian roads, which is the lowest number of road fatalities in the entire period of independence. In 2022, there were 43 road deaths per million inhabitants, a rate that for the first time managed to catch up with the European Union (EU) average in recent years.

On Tuesday, the Minister of Transport and Communications is leaving for Poland to participate in an international conference in Warsaw, which will emphasise the importance of the railway sector for the safety of Europe. During the visit, the Minister will also meet the European Commission’s Coordinator for Rail Baltica and the heads of LOT Polish Airlines.

Minister of the Economy and Innovation Aušrinė Armonaitė met with Taiwan’s Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang in Vilnius on Wednesday. During the meeting, the ministers focused on the implementation of joint projects in the fields of digital literacy, financial technology and innovation in the public sector, and digitisation.