Roundup: Lithuanian president calls for strengthening security, fighting corruption

Dalia Grybauskaite, Lithuanian president, gave her annual State of the Nation Address on Thursday, highlighting national security issues and criticizing corruption prevention.

The head of the small Baltic country started the address, which was already a sixth during her ruling, from security threats to the region reminding the citizens of their personal responsibility and duty to defend the country. Yet she highlighted the growing common understanding and unity in light of geopolitical tenses.

"The constitutional duty to ensure national defense, consistent with the emerging threats, has united the state leadership, political opponents, people of different nationalities, and even competitors in the media," said the president.

In her speech, Grybauskaite defended the need to reintroduce compulsory military conscription.

"It was not easy to openly admit that our armed forces units are manned at only 35 percent," she said, noting the world around Lithuania "is not peaceful".

Security situation in Eastern Europe has deteriorated since the armed conflict in the Eastern Ukraine emerged a year ago, causing Lithuania's concerns on its own armed forces.

DOMESTIC ISSUES

While running through domestic matters, Grybauskaite highlighted European Union funding issues and fight against corruption. Regarding the latter, she accused responsible institutions of taking inadequate and ineffective measures.

"Fighting corruption is still, at best, a formality," said the president, noting corruption remains a serious obstacle for the country to become "a welfare state".

Grybauskaite was pointing to ineffective use of EU assistance funds counting examples of failed projects and urging the society to take a closer look on how the state budget money is spent.

"If we turn a blind eye, millions of EU assistance will slip away," she said.

The ministry of economy received the president's criticism for maintaining practices of ineffective investment of the European money.

Meanwhile, Algirdas Butkevicius, the prime minister, said that flexible labor regulation, real, but not formal employee protection is needed in the field of labor relations.

"Thus I expect clear support when considering a new project of social model after it is sent off from the government," said Butkevicius in a press release, published after the president's address.

A new social model was once described by Butkevicius as one of the priorities for the ruling coalition in the current and the coming political season. In her speech Grybauskaite emphasized labor decisions shouldn't get lost "in the social model labyrinth".

"The government has to decide on at least several most necessary measures proposed by experts and put them in place to liberalize labor relations," said the president who required wide consultation with social partners before implementing labor reforms.

LACKING PROPOSALS

Professor Gitanas Nauseda, chief economist at Sweden's SEB bank in Lithuania, noted that the president has chosen to name the problems, but not the ways to solve them.

"Maybe she was doing it on purpose expecting that the government will take responsibility," professor told national broadcaster LRT.

"The president asked for strategic decisions, but evaluating her speech in that sense, such strategic decisions haven't been proposed or proposed little," added Saulius Spurga, the political scientist.

Professor Kestutis Girnius highlighted the president's speech included wide range of themes, though he didn't get clear proposals and personal responsibility from the president.

"What I miss the most from the president's speech is that she often points out what others, the government, the state security department, have to do, but she never takes her own commitments, what she will try to achieve in coming years," said Girnius to LRT in a special TV coverage after the address. Endit