Analytics, Baltic States – CIS, Custom, Lithuania

The Speaker of the Seimas Arunas Valinskas

The Head of the Parliament said that he made such conclusions after considering the chronology of events: on July 3, a resolution on the equal treatment of Stalinism and Hitlerism crimes was adopted during the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vilnius. On July 18, the Russian Duma declares a statement on the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the World War 2, expressing indignation at the equation of crimes of Stalinism and Hitlerism to the humankind. On July 23, the Russian customs informs the Lithuanian customs that Russia would take additional measures to inspect Lithuanian carriers and also sends a letter to Linava (the Lithuanian National Road Carriers' Association).

On July 30, Lithuania does not permit the well-known propagandist Modest Kolerov to enter the country. On August 4, Lithuanian carriers start getting stuck in queues at the Latvian-Russian borderline. "Afterwards, there were various contacts at the level of the Government, calls, letters and an agreement is reached on August 13. The core of the agreement is that sanctions are still applied to 29 companies and that they are allegedly lifted to the majority of other companies," Valinskas told in an interview to the Ziniu Radijas on Wednesday.

The Seimas speaker also remembered that Russia officially announced that it determined 16 violations of the Convention on International Transport of Goods Under Cover of TIR Carnets this year. "These are "not closed" TIR carnets stating that the cargo crossed the border between the European Union and Russia and disappeared somewhere without customs duty ad excise duty paid. From the legal point of view, the Russian Federation is right, Lithuanian carriers violated the TIR Convention, but let's face the facts. The measures applied have been inadequate, the number of violations in proportion to the general number of transportation is very small, 0.03%, and the tightened control has been applied to all Lithuanian carriers, not the offenders alone," Valinskas said.

The Seimas speaker also reminded unofficial warnings that these measures were aimed to push Lithuanian carriers away from the Russian road haulage market. It would be allegedly beneficial to Russian, Latvian, Finnish, Polish carriers. In Valinskas' opinion, this will become a reality in 3-4 weeks.

"Additional inspection is applied to 29 companies, and around 700 companies have avoided that. However, these 29 companies comprise 70% of the total Lithuania's transportation of goods to Russia. We can make conclusions ourselves that Lithuanian carriers have been removed from the Russian haulage market by a political decision," Valinskas said. "It already has consequences on the carriers and we have not defended them politically by saying that Lithuania should firstly clean up itself as there were violations. If the state is openly blackmailed by administrative means and Russia does not allow all carriers to cross the border instead of the carriers of one or another company that were known to the Russian customs, then we can think of answers and make conclusions ourselves," the Seimas speaker pointed out.

In Valinskas' opinion, the problem should be solved at the ministerial level. "I think that the meetings of ministers should take place. Efforts should be put to explain the stand voiced by the president as well that such things are undoubtedly harmful to both sides," Valinskas said.