President Gitanas Nausėda received India’s Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, who arrived for a three-day official visit to Lithuania, and the accompanying delegation. During their meeting, the President and the Vice President discussed bilateral relations as well as initiatives to expand political, economic and cultural ties. President Gitanas Nausėda noted that India had promised to open its first Baltic embassy namely in Lithuania.

The European Union recalls its close relations with Hong Kong under the ‘one country, two systems’ principle and its strong stake in its continued stability and prosperity.

The European Union has released €9 million in humanitarian aid in response to the deteriorating food and nutrition situation in Haiti. The humanitarian aid will cover the basic food and nutritional needs of more than 130,000 people living in the worst affected areas.

Urgent assistance and fair distribution of Open Arms rescue boat migrants needed, says EP President David Sassoli in a letter to Commission President Juncker.

On 13 August in Vilnius, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Linas Linkevičius met with the U.S. Congressman Mike Quigley, representing the 5th Congressional District of Illinois to discuss important issues of the bilateral Lithuania-U.S. relationship, security situation in the region, and energy policy.

On August 7, Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius expressed his condolences on the passing of former Indian Minister of External Affairs Ms Shusma Swaraj. The Minister extended his deepest sympathy to the family, friends and colleagues of the deceased.

The European Commission is mobilising a further €50 million in emergency humanitarian funding to help the people hit by drought in the Horn of Africa. With many in the region relying on livestock herding and subsistence farming, the prolonged drought is having devastating consequences on food availability and livelihoods. Today's additional funding brings total EU humanitarian aid to the region to €366.5 million since 2018.

To ensure refugees continue to be supported by the EU's largest humanitarian programme in Turkey, the Commission has today announced an additional €127 million to the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) programme via the EU Facility for Refugees in Turkey. This new funding brings the total EU contribution to the programme to €1.125 billion.

The European Commission has found that the marketing agreements concluded between the local Association for the Promotion of Touristic and Economic Flows (APFTE) and Ryanair at the airport of Montpellier are illegal under EU State aid rules. Ryanair now has to return €8.5 million of illegal State aid.

The European Commission is today taking stock of its overall approach to equivalence in the area of financial services. EU equivalence has become a significant tool in recent years, fostering integration of global financial markets and cooperation with third-country authorities. The EU assesses the overall policy context and to what extent the regulatory regimes of a given third country achieves the same outcomes as its own rules. A positive equivalence decision, which is a unilateral measure by the Commission, allows EU authorities to rely on third-country rules and supervision, allowing market participants from third countries who are active in the EU to comply with only one set of rules. Today's Communication also sets out how recent updates to EU legislation will ensure even greater effectiveness of the EU single rulebook, supervision and monitoring, while also fostering cross-border business in global markets. The Commission has to date taken over 280 equivalence decisions with regard to over 30 countries.