Prime minister warns MPs China initiative may not help ties
Friday 14th August 2026 on 18:45 in
Lithuania
Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius has said that a planned Brussels visit by a group of MPs to meet Chinese representatives may not help restore relations between Vilnius and Beijing, LRT reported.
The members of a temporary group in Lithuania’s parliament plan to visit Brussels and meet Chinese representatives in early September.
“It is difficult to criticise the initiatives of members of parliament because they have a free mandate to act. But I believe we must always think about the prestige of the state and how we look in the eyes of our partners. The country’s foreign policy must be consistent and have a clear direction. The president and the government are responsible for foreign policy,” Sinkevičius told LNK television on Friday.
“There are formats and committees in parliament that operate, but these improvisations, sometimes driven by good intentions, do not necessarily always help,” he added.
Delfi reported this week that MPs Ignas Vėgėlė, Vitalijus Šeršniovas, Tadas Barauskas, Algirdas Butkevičius, Rimas Jonas Jankūnas, Karolis Neimantas and Artūras Zuokas had formed a temporary group called “For normalising diplomatic relations with China to the level of European Union member states” and planned to travel to Brussels.
BNS reported that members of the ruling coalition had recently been speaking more actively about normalising diplomatic representation in relations with China, but this had not yet produced practical results.
The government programme led by Sinkevičius pledges to seek the normalisation of “diplomatic relations with China to the level of diplomatic representation that exists in other European Union member states”.
Last week, after meeting Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys, parliamentary speaker Juozas Olekas said he saw progress in efforts to normalise relations between Vilnius and Beijing.
The countries’ bilateral relations deteriorated in 2021 after Lithuania allowed Taiwan to open a Taiwanese representative office in the country.