Polish minority

Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz has called on Lithuania to amend its legislation so that ethnic minority parties do not have to reach the threshold of votes needed to enter the Seimas.

Marek Kuchcinski, the Marshal of the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, on Tuesday called on Lithuanian lawmakers to support a bill that would allow using non-Lithuanian letters in Lithuanian citizens' identification documents.

The Lithuanian language watchdog did not assess certain legal provisions, currently under debate in the Seimas, that would pave the way, among other things, for ethnic Poles who are Lithuanian citizens to have their names spelt in their identity documents with non-Lithuanian characters.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis told his Polish counterpart, Beata Szydło, on Monday that national minorities in Lithuania would not be discriminated against over the spelling of their names in documents.

Lithuania and Poland are destined to cooperate, says Poland's former president Lech Walesa, the leader of the Solidarity movement and the winner of the Nobel Prize for peace.

Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaitė has applauded the response of the country's citizens of Russian and Polish nationality to growing external threats in the shape of voluntary service in the national defence system.

Both nations – the Lithuanians and the Polish – both recall well how our mutual conflict in between the two World Wars became a noose on both our necks. Then third parties put in great efforts in “helping” the conflict not reach resolution, but even the conflict itself was complex and difficult.

I have always been among a right winger politician in Lithuania who supported and support the party you founded with your late brother Lech in 2001 Law and Justice.

Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis thinks that more viewers in Lithuania should have access to Polish TV channels.

Lithuania's Parliamentary Speaker Viktoras Pranckietis on Monday dismissed the problems of the Polish national minority as something minor, urging the two countries to skip them and "do the most important work, major work."

Lithuanian Seimas Speaker Loreta Graužinienė says she doubts that the outgoing parliament will adopt a law on the spelling of first and last names in official documents.

Lithuania has a long history of being home to ethnic minority communities, from as early as 1323 when Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas invited foreign artisans and merchants to come to Lithuania and settle there without interference in their customs and culture.

Lithuania's Polish speaking community held a traditional parade on Saturday to celebrate the Polish Diaspora Day which is observed on May 2.

After Thursday's rally of ethnic minority schools, a dispute has broken out between the protestors and the Vilnius municipality authorities over the aims of the rally – whether it was to improve the status of minority schools or achieve political objectives in light of upcoming elections.