Russian threats, the euro crisis, and the future of Catalonia

The Lithuanian MPs Birute Vesaite and Audronius Ažubalis visited Catalonia to discuss the situation in their country, especially vis-à-vis the current major conflicts in Europe, but also to gain knowledge of Catalonia’s independence process.

Ažubalis, the country’s former foreign minister, is a member of Lithuania’s Popular Party; he is currently the vice president of the foreign affairs committee in the Lithuanian parliament. Vesaite, former finance minister, belongs to the country’s socialist party. VilaWeb discussed with them the current affairs of both countries.

Is Lithuania illegal as a country?

Last week, an unusual initiative introduced in the Russian Duma asked whether Lithuania’s independence had been arrived at by legal means. The initiative failed, but, despite what it may seem, it was not anecdotal. For years, Russian pressure on the Baltic states has been mounting, even more so after the events in the Ukraine. Baltic states have reacted decisively. Lithuania, for example, has reinstated a compulsory military service and strengthened its cooperation with NATO. Both Estonia and Lithuania have already introduced the euro—one of the strongest symbols of cooperation within the European Union. Russia has launched all manner of confrontations over these last few years, but Russia is of the view that the tensions in the Baltic area reflect mostly a propaganda war whose goal is to divide society. Of the Baltic states, Lithuania is the one with the smallest Russian minority, but Russia has sought to influence the significant Polish minority as a way of hindering the full recovery of Lithuania’s nationhood. It may seem paradoxical, but twenty-five years after the declaration of independence there are still people of the former capital who question the right of the Lithuanian people to be independent.

Ažubalis reacts calmly. ‘If there is anyone who doubts the legitimacy of the Lithuanian state, we will, in turn, question the legitimacy of the current Russian state, which was born out of the murder of the Tsar’s entire family at the hands of the Bolsheviks’.

Vesaite, for her part, insists that there are growing threats—which she deems foolish and misguided—in the form of propaganda. ‘How can anyone consider the three Baltic states illegal? It is ridiculous and, like my fellow countrymen, I cannot give any serious consideration to the matter’.

The last country to join the euro, at a time of great tension

Lithuania was the last country to join the eurozone, on the first of January of this year, just in time for the great controversy surrounding the Greek debt crisis. Vesaite insists that the country’s adoption of the euro was very smooth. The population has adjusted quickly, she said, and, far from causing prices to go, the euro has attracted ‘much needed’ foreign investment.

Lithuania might have been the last to arrive at the table, but this has not caused it to shrink from taking a strong position. In the recent meetings regarding the fate of the Greek bailout, Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius, a socialist, clearly aligned himself with Germany and said he was prepared to see Greece leave the eurozone.

Vesaite, who belongs to the governing party, obviously shares the prime minister’s position on the matter; she insists that the European Commission’s recommendations must become legally binding.

Ažubalis goes a step further and demands rigor while denouncing the ‘fiscal and budgetary games’ that some countries play, in reference, particularly, to Greece. He believes that the European Commission and Ecofin should be granted much greater power than they presently have to control member states and prevent them from putting the entire eurozone at risk.

‘We will respect what the people of Catalonia express at the ballot’

Ažubalis and Vesaite also spoke about their experience in Barcelona over these last few days and about their views on Catalonia’s independence process. Ažubalis did not position himself clearly on the bid to secede from Spain; he said simply that any change ‘in the peninsula’ should be peaceful and democratic. Vesaite, however, was more open; she said that she had met with a good number of Catalonia’s political parties and that the Catalan people are very divided, which she considered detrimental. ‘We, like every [political] family in Europe, will respect the decision of the Catalan people’ she added. ‘Now, we must wait for the outcome of the next election’.

Ažubalis then remembered something, which seemed to take the form of a piece of advice: ‘When we proclaimed independence on 11 March, 1990, we immediately requested to negotiate with the Soviet authorities in order to establish the nature of our relationship. Sixty times we requested to have an official exchange with them, and sixty times they responded with silence. They did not even respond’. Ažubalis suddenly laughs, rejuvenated. ‘But on the sixty-first request, they responded, and everything changed’.