Lithuania still awaits Taiwan's decisions to develop cooperation - minister

VILNIUS - Lithuania is still waiting for Taiwan's decisions to develop bilateral cooperation with the island, Lithuanian Economy and Innovation Minister Lukas Savickas says after Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas said that relations with Taiwan were frozen.

"I think that the freezing of relations is probably based on the fact that there have been a lot of commitments and the Lithuanian side has certainly made a number of decisive decisions. And we certainly expected that we would also see some breakthrough from the Taiwanese side in their decisions on the prospect of our economic cooperation," the minister told the Ziniu Radijas news radio on Thursday.

"And we certainly have a couple, even more than a couple, of opportunities on the table that we could realize, we're just still waiting for those decisions. So, that allusion to frozen relations probably, it has more to do with the fact that there is certainly a number of real opportunities identified for our closer economic cooperation and I would like to see them realized as soon as possible," he added.

In an interview with the delfi.lt news website, the prime minister has recently claimed that practical cooperation with Taiwan is frozen because the relationship is built on high expectations that have not been realized.

"We don't have a billion-dollar investment fund, nor do we have shared technologies in the field of semiconductors. There are many things that apparently sound nicer in the headlines than they are in practice," Paluckas said.

"As for our exports, they have recovered to some extent over the past period. As for imports, however, supply chains, the sourcing of raw materials and so on, many of our businesses have already relocated to more politically predictable countries," the prime minister added.

As BNS reported earlier, Lithuania's relations with China soured in 2021 after Vilnius began forging closer ties with Taipei and allowed the island to open its representative office in the Lithuanian capital with "Taiwanese" in its name.

China views the move as an attempt by Taiwan to act as an independent state. Elsewhere, such offices operate under the name Taipei.