Baltic PMs focus on energy security and Ukraine in Tallinn

The Prime Ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were meeting in Tallinn Friday under the auspices of the Baltic Council of Ministers with future energy security and more help for Ukraine top of their joint agenda.

"Today we focused on one of the major challenges facing us - ensuring our energy security. This is a priority issue. Synchronising our power systems with Central Europe successfully and effectively was among the first topics discussed by my new government," said Estonian PM Kaja Kallas.

"Today we agreed to continue discussions on accelerating synchronisation as soon as all of the technical studies are finished. In doing so, we will try to find a joint timeline for acceleration. Ministers responsible for energy will continue working on details. And we will continue to coordinate closely with the European Commission and Poland," Kallas said.

Latvian PM Krišjānis Kariņš said the long term objective of the Baltic states should be "to go fully renewable" and be completely independent of fossil fuels and dependecy on single-source providers. He said offshore wind energy projects were important in this regard, but also required better infrastructure links to central Europe and Scandinavia.

On synchronization of electricity grids with central Europe and de-synchronization with the Russian and Belarusian grid, Kariņs said: "We're all in agreement that we need to move as quickly as is feasible on a  technical level but certainly the political will and determination is there amongst all of us." 

Lithuanian PM Ingrida Šimonyte addressed the security situation in the region and said the trio had discussed sanctions against Russia and Belarus and support for Ukraine.

"We are too well aware that Russia, blinded by its imperial ambitions, poses a threat not only to the freedom of Ukraine but also to our own nations, to Europe asa whole, to democratic values and to a rules-based world order," said Šimonyte.

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