BNS: Baltic, Polish PMs to meet in Vilnius next Monday
Updated 2009-04-28
VILNIUS, Apr 22, BNS - The prime ministers of the three Baltic countries and Poland are expected to sign a declaration on an electricity link with Sweden when they meet in Vilnius next Monday, Apr. 27.
"This is a very important political meeting for us and were are making active preparations for it," Rimantas Vaitkus, the CEO of Lithuania's national energy company Leo LT, told BNS on Wednesday.
The prime ministers are also expected to discuss the creation of a common electricity market in the Baltics and the planned new nuclear power plant project.
Loreta Zakareviciene, an aide to Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, told BNS that the prime ministers of Lithuania, Estonia and Poland, and Latvian government officials, as well as the heads of energy companies of all four countries, and Sweden and Finland were expected to participate in a round table discussion to be held at the Stikliai Hotel in Vilnius.
Kubilius said earlier this month that significant progress had been made on the Swedish power link project and expressed his hope that the Baltic prime ministers would sign a declaration during their meeting in Vilnius.
The establishment of a common electricity market in the Baltics is a key condition for the power link project to be realized. Kubilius said that the interconnection would be an infrastructure project as it would link the Scandinavian market to the Baltic market.
The Polish and Estonian prime ministers have recently urged Lithuania to speed up work on its planned new nuclear power station. Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip said last week that he was dissatisfied with the very slow pace of preparations for the project.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski said during his visit to Vilnius last week that Poland supported the new nuclear power station project and a project to connect the power grids of the two neighboring countries, but wanted guarantees that it would have a certain share of the new plant's output.
Lithuania wants to bring its planned new nuclear power plant online by 2018, but experts say that 2020 is a more realistic target. The Baltic-Swedish power link project, known as Swedlink, is estimated to cost around 1.5 billion litas (EUR 435 mln) and is expected to be implemented by 2016. The energy systems would be linked via a 350-kilometer, 700-1,000 megawatt cable under the Baltic Sea.
