The talks, officially known as intergovernmental consultations, will be led by Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Lithuania’s Saulius Skvernelis, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency has reported.
The main topic of the talks will be “the situation in Belarus,” where post-election protests have grown against longtime strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko and of which both Poland and Lithuania are neighbors, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński has told reporters.
During their talks in the Lithuanian capital on Thursday, more than 20 government ministers from the two countries will also discuss issues such as the next EU budget, migration and ways of coordinating “policies and actions within the EU," Jabłoński said.
The Polish prime minister said last year that Poland and Lithuania were “headed in the same direction” as they deepened political, economic and cultural ties.
Speaking after talks with his Lithuanian counterpart in Warsaw in September last year, Poland's Morawiecki said that the two countries were deepening their political, economic and cultural relationships while taking into account “historical and social sensitivities.”
Morawiecki thanked Skvernelis for his proposal of holding intergovernmental consultations in 2020, saying this could lead to bilateral “cooperation being even better so that we can jointly represent our positions in Europe.”
Morawiecki was also quoted as saying at the time that "in practical terms, Poland and Lithuania have very similar, if not nearly identical, positions” amid ongoing negotiations on the next long-term budget of the European Union of which they are both part.
Meanwhile, Lithuania’s Skvernelis told reporters that intergovernmental relations between Poland and Lithuania were "the best they have ever been," Poland's PAP news agency reported back then.
(gs/pk)
Source: IAR, PAP