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Roundup: Lithuania to receive up to 250 refugees, expecting EU funding

Xinhua, June 24, 2015 Adjust font size:

Lithuania expects European Union financial support while resettling foreign migrants in the country, Lithuania's Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius said Tuesday.

"I believe that discussions on allocating funds from the EU budget should take place during the meeting of the European Council, there is one specific program," Butkevicius said in an interview with local radio broadcaster LRT.

The Lithuanian government decided Monday that it would be able to accept up to 250 refugees, according to the EU's pilot project on migrant resettlement across the EU, offering places to persons qualifying for protection.

Lithuania would accept the migrants until June 30, 2018, the government said.

"It is a political decision, we express our opinion due to solidarity, to planning, and surely there will be solutions for funding later," Butkevicius commented.

President Dalia Grybauskaite was the first to mention earlier this month that Lithuania would be able to take in up to 250 refugees.

According to Grybauskaite, the calculations were made by a formula based on the population and the gross domestic product (GDP).

Renaldas Vaisbrodas, Grybauskaite's chief foreign policy adviser, expressed the hope that sharing of refugees will be based on the principle of volunteerism and not to be restricted to only those coming from the south.

"We hope to be able to agree during the general discussion that the sharing of refugees that will be carried out on the EU level will be voluntary and geographically neutral, i.e., refugees will be accepted not only from the South but also from the East, the Eastern Partnership," BNS news agency cited Vaisbrodas as saying.

"That way we would be able to balance," he noted.

The migrant issue will be addressed by the European Council in Brussels on Thursday. The Lithuanian president will present the country's position at the summit.

The migrant situation became a top issue in Europe this April, after hundreds of migrants died trying to reach the EU's Mediterranean coast. Endit