Lithuania would “appreciate” stronger European Union support in its dispute with China, Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said, after the United States agreed to offer the Baltic nation financial support to help cushion any financial losses stemming from the row.

The day after the opening of a Taiwanese Representative Office in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, Landsbergis confirmed that the country would sign a US$600 million export credit deal with the government-owned Export-Import Bank of the United States.

“I think that you could say that [China] was an impetus for some discussions. Our discussion with our partners was always that Lithuania is facing certain problems, economic and financial, because of pressure that we’re receiving from China,” Landsbergis said in an interview in Vilnius.

In a furious statement issued after the opening of the de facto embassy, Beijing “demanded that the Lithuanian side immediately correct its wrong decision”.

“The Lithuanian side is responsible for all consequences arising therefrom,” the statement continued, describing it as an “egregious act”.

When asked if the country wanted more concrete support from the EU, he replied “it would be appreciated”, adding: “It’s in all our interests that neither country would suffer if its supply chains are being cut or something like that.”

He suggested that the support could include rearranging supply chains and financing to reduce dependence on China, adding: “We need to figure out the toolbox that any country could use, when it faces this sort of coercion and to give countries more because … the situation Lithuania finds itself in that we have limited manoeuvring space in foreign policy field when it comes to Indo-Pacific.”

Brussels has thus far offered rhetorical support and confirmed that the opening of the office is within the EU’s one China Policy. In a joint letter last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel described Beijing’s pressure on Lithuania as “unjustified” and “disproportionate”.

“We are a nation that still very well understands and remembers what it is to be under occupation, and the struggle of getting free and getting out and rebuilding your country, basically from democratic ruin.

“Even the young politicians who are now part of our current parliament, were still of a generation that lived a small portion of their lives under occupation. So it is very well felt and very well understood what it means to be coerced, be pressured, and to try to defend your liberty.”

Finbarr Bermingham

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Finbarr Bermingham reports on Europe-China relations for the Post. He joined the newspaper in 2018, initially on the Political Economy desk reporting primarily on global trade, economics and geopolitics. After a decade on the trade beat in London and Hong Kong, he took up the role of Europe Correspondent, moving to Brussels to report from the heart of the EU. Having helmed the US-China Trade War Update, a weekly podcast, since 2019, he is the current host of the China Geopolitics Podcast.