Seimas Speaker Saulius Skvernelis says he agrees with Prime Minister Gintautas Palucas that expectations of cooperation between Lithuania and Taiwan have not been realised.
“I fully agree with the prime minister, because the headlines were big and expectations were raised. According to those headlines and the statements of some colleagues, politicians and great optimism, we should have had some five chip factories in Lithuania by now, exceptional conditions, a huge breakthrough in economic cooperation. [...] We don’t see any of that,” Skvernelis told the radio Žinių Radijas on Wednesday.
He said he “does not want to be disappointed with Taiwan”, but the “exaggerated optimism” in relations with the island was an attempt “to cover up adventurism in foreign policy, when a Taiwanese mission was opened, named in a way it should not be named”.
The island opened a representative office in Vilnius in 2021, part of Lithuania’s push to stake out a more hawkish position on China and forge closer relations with Taiwan.
Relations between Vilnius and Beijing have deteriorated as a result. In particular, the name of the office, which includes “Taiwanese”, which Beijing sees as an attempt by Taiwan to act as an independent state. In other countries, the island’s representative offices operate under the name Taipei.
According to Skvernelis, the normalisation of relations with China is on the government’s agenda: “The processes are certainly not being discussed in public, but they are probably taking place in one form or another.”
Last week, in the Delfi.lt programme Business Position, Prime Minsiter Paluckas said that practical cooperation between Lithuania and Taiwan is frozen and the high expectations raised have not been realised.
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