EU BACKS LITHUANIA'S SUGGESTIONS FOR KALININGRAD TRANSIT RULES

Foreign Minister Antanas Valionis announced that he has received a letter from Jonathan Faull, the director-general for Justice and Home Affairs of the European Commission, about the 2 April meeting of the EU Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER). The meeting discussed the comments on the regulations for the so-called facilitated transit documents for travel to the Kaliningrad Oblast that were proposed during the trilateral consultations in Brussels among Lithuania, the European Commission, and Russia. COREPER rejected the Russian proposals to allow Russian booking offices to sell train tickets after accessing Lithuanian databases over the Internet. It backed the Lithuanian proposal to allow the sale of tickets only after the data of prospective buyers has been approved by Lithuanian consular control within a 24-hour period. Lithuanian and Russian negotiators in Moscow on 4 April also agreed on the final wording of the draft intergovernmental agreement on readmission, whose signing Lithuania considers necessary to facilitate travel to Kaliningrad after 1 July.