European affairs committees of Baltic, Polish parliaments to call on EU to strengthen Poland's border protection

VILNIUS – The Baltic and Polish parliamentary Committees on European Affairs Committees will urge the European Union to strengthen the protection of Poland's borders and reduce the EU's dependence on Russian liquefied gas, Z ygimantas Pavilionis, chairman of the Lithuanian committee, told a press conference at the Seimas on Monday.

"Migration within our border segment is going up by almost 190 percent. Poland is currently taking the full hit. We must stand in solidarity with Poland and it has a number of plans to reinforce this dimension during its presidency. We have agreed to prepare a joint document in which we will try to set out our arguments on this," the MP said, adding that Brussels and other EU member states "have not yet been sufficiently convinced" that increasing migration poses is a security and hybrid threat.

The committee chairs have also agreed on a joint document to draw the EU's attention to the bloc's "threateningly growing" dependence on Russian liquefied natural gas.

"Since May, Russia, not America, has been the leading provider of liquefied natural gas to the EU. And while the EU has built seven new terminals over the last two years, what good of it if they are filled with Russian gas?" Pavilionis asked.

In his words, the use of the format of the chairs of the Committees European Affairs Committees through the inclusion of the Nordic countries, Germany and the United States.

"Transatlantic relations will be one of the biggest challenges, and also enlargement, the ongoing negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova, which Poland will try to accelerate, are of great common interest to us," Pavilionis said.

The committee chairs held a meeting in Vilnius on September 15-16. It was also meant to prepare for the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union (COSAC) to be held in Budapest in late October.

Poland will hold the rotating EU presidency the first half of 2025.