Abstract
Accession to the European Union (EU), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership and good neighbourly relations became the strategic priorities of Lithuania’s foreign policy soon after it re-established its independence on 11 March 1990.1 European and transatlantic integration gathered pace, and Lithuania with the other two Baltic states — Estonia and Latvia — negotiated a number of agreements with the EU, leading to the start of accession negotiations less than a decade after they were recognized as sovereign states. Lithuanian political leaders formally applied for EU membership in December 1995. Accession negotiations, which Lithuania started together with so-called second wave of candidate countries in 2000, were finalized at the end of 2002. After a referendum in 2003, which produced a clear majority for EU membership (91 per cent backed Lithuania’s EU accession on a turnout of 63 per cent), Lithuania joined the EU on 1 May 2004, having become a member of NATO on 29 March 2004.
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© 2015 Ramūnas Vilpišauskas
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Vilpišauskas, R. (2015). Parliamentary Scrutiny of EU Affairs in Lithuania: The Dog That Rarely Barks. In: Hefftler, C., Neuhold, C., Rozenberg, O., Smith, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of National Parliaments and the European Union. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-28913-1_29
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-28913-1_29
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-67095-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-28913-1
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