Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will urge the European Union to provide help in ensuring the region's future energy supplies, Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite said Wednesday after a meeting in Vilnius with her Latvian and Estonian counterparts, DPA reported.
"Our small countries' economic and political interests are very similar. All three Baltic countries are interested in the market for energy independence, a common electricity market and the financing of energy projects from EU funds," Grybauskaite told journalists at a news conference after the meeting.
The three governments will draw up a list of joint projects to be launched from 2014 using EU funds, Grybauskaite said.
The EU has already given the green light for energy connections to be built from Lithuania to both Sweden and Poland, plus a second connection between Estonia and Finland to join the Estlink connection, which is currently the only link between the Baltic and Nordic electricity grids.
Energy issues have risen to the top of the political agenda in the Baltics thanks to the imminent closure of the region's only nuclear power plant, the Ignalina facility in north-east Lithuania.
Ignalina is scheduled to shut down on December 31 under the terms of Lithuania's accession agreement with the EU, which it joined in 2004 along with the other Baltic states. Ignalina supplies electricity to all three countries, but a tender for construction of a replacement was published only on December 8.
Many in the Baltic region are concerned that the closure will negatively affect economies already reeling from the deepest recessions in the EU.
Energy bills are set to rise, and the Baltics fear they will become more reliant on Russian energy supplies, 20 years after they regained their independence from the Soviet Union.
Temperatures of minus 14 Celsius and driving snow in the Lithuanian capital Wednesday added focus to Baltic energy concerns, even as the Lithuanian Energy Ministry issued advice suggesting homeowners could reduce bills by turning their thermostats down.
After their meeting the three presidents said they wanted the EU to give a bigger voice to the mainly Eastern European countries that joined the 27-member bloc in 2004.
In the afternoon the trio, together with EU Commissioner Vladimir Spidla, opened the European Institute for Gender Equality in Vilnius, which is the first EU agency to be based in the Baltic states.
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