President of Lithuania blames EU for failure to address migration crisis

President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaitė, who is on an official visit to Slovenia, said the European Union did not manage to implement the strategic decisions to address the migration crisis properly. In her words, this makes some countries resume the internal control of their borders, the president’s press office told EADaily.

The Lithuanian leader’s visit to Slovenia was timed to the 25th anniversary of the two countries’ diplomatic relations. Grybauskaitė and her Slovenian counterpart Borut Pahor among others spotlighted the migration crisis, as the small country as Slovenia has also faced a large flow of refugees.  Last year, 380,000 people entered Slovenia, and another 100,000 arrived in the country in the first two months of 2016 alone. Nevertheless, Dalia Grybauskaitė assessed negatively the restoration of the internal borders of the EU, which, as she thinks, will make it impossible to manage the refugee flows.

It is noteworthy that Grybauskaitė is celebrating her 60th birthday anniversary on March 1. Some para-governmental media have published her biography, almost fully omitting a significant period of the her life – 1980s. In particular, the president’s biography says nothing about her admission to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1983 and the political economy lectures she delivered at the Vilnius Higher Party School.