EU member countries faced with high migrant flows expect Lithuania to show solidarity in taking in asylum seekers, says Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, responding to a presidential adviser’s earlier claim that Vilnius should instead pay 3 million euros a year under the EU’s new asylum rules.
Following last week’s approval by the European Parliament of the EU’s migration reform package, which requires Lithuania to accept around 158 migrants or pay 3.16 million euros annually, the debate on which path to take is heating up in the country.
“When we appealed to these countries for greater support for Ukraine and in dealing with some other important issues, including the instrumentalisation of migration, we expected understanding. We have to understand that these countries expect understanding from us as well,” Šimonytė told reporters on Thursday.
“If all countries choose to pay the money, these people can’t be left hanging in the air. We need to solve this problem somehow,” she added.
The prime minister believes that the debate on whether Lithuania should take in about 150 migrants every year or pay several million euros is forced.
“In my understanding, that dilemma doesn’t exist. We can certainly help other EU countries to take some pressure off, especially since the numbers [...] aren’t similar to those we faced when migrants were coming across the border, pushed by [Alexander] Lukashenko,” she said, referring to the 2021 “migration crisis” when several thousand asylum seekers crossed into Lithuania from Belarus.
Šimonytė warned that the debate on the relocation of migrants overshadows the essence of the migration package.
“The Migration Pact is much more than just this issue, to which we reduce all the reform in our public discussion. Because provisions have been adopted on completely different principles and a completely different approach to the migration process, including cases where migration is instrumentalised, which is what we faced,” she said.
The migration package has yet to be approved by the EU Council.
Parliament Speaker Viktorija Čmilyte-Nielsen, who is also the leader of the Liberal Movement party, has also spoken out in favour of taking in migrants rather than paying.
Meanwhile, Irena Segalovičienė, chief economic and social policy adviser to President Gitanas Nausėda, has recently commented that of the two options, the financial contribution “is more acceptable to the president”.
Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė has said earlier that a commission made up of representatives from various ministries should decide on Lithuania’s actions.
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