EU Commissioner for Humanitarian and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides has issued the following statement:

President Dalia Grybauskaitė will travel to New York to attend the 70th session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly.

Rising temperatures, melting glaciers and ever more frequent droughts and floods are all signs that climate change is a very real threat. In December a new international climate agreement will be sought at a special UN summit in Paris. On Wednesday the environment committee adopted a report setting out Parliament's aims for the negotiations. After the Committee vote, EP rapporteur Gilles Pargneaux (S&D, FR) talked to us on the goals agreed upon. The plenary vote is foreseen for October 14.

On Wednesday, September 23, President Dalia Grybauskaitė will travel to Brussels for an extraordinary meeting of the European Council. The summit meeting has been convened as a matter of urgency to find a unified and effective response to the deepening refugee crisis.

The Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Neris Germanas took part in the political consultations between the Foreign Ministries of Lithuania and Finland on 16 September in Helsinki. Germanas met with Finland's Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Security Policy Anne Sipiläinen to discuss bilateral relations, topical issues on European agenda, regional cooperation, security challenges and preparation for the upcoming session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.

The European Commission's latest proposals to solve the refugee crisis will be discussed by the civil liberties committee this week, while the economic affairs committee will question Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, on the state of the euro zone. In addition the tax rulings committee will discuss tax policies with the finance ministers of Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Luxembourg.

An emergency proposal to relocate 120,000 asylum seekers from Italy, Greece and Hungary among EU member states was backed by Parliament on Thursday. The first temporary emergency rules for relocating an initial 40,000 over two years from Italy and Greece only were approved by Parliament on 9 September.

Loreta Graužinienė, Speaker of the Seimas, has met with Thea Tsulukiani, Minister of Justice of Georgia, on her visit to Lithuania. During the meeting, the Speaker of the Seimas expressed her appreciation of Georgia's progress towards European integration and encouraged to actively continue with the reforms in line with the obligations imposed by the Association Agreement.

The European Commission has released an additional aid package of €15 million amid an increasingly deteriorating humanitarian situation in South Sudan. The funding brings the total EU humanitarian aid for the country to nearly €300 million so far in 2015.

An emergency proposal to relocate 120,000 asylum seekers from Italy, Greece and Hungary among EU member states was backed by Parliament on Thursday. The first temporary emergency rules for relocating an initial 40,000 over two years from Italy and Greece only were approved by Parliament on 9 September.