Maardu Manor, 5 December 2014 – The central topics of the meeting of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Prime Ministers were security, joint energy and infrastructure projects, as well as digital cooperation.
The Prime Ministers noted that the security situation that continues to be tense requires rapid implementation of agreements, which were achieved at the NATO Summit, and it is important to ensure the presence of the allies on land, at sea, and in the air.
“It is vital for Estonia that also Latvia and Lithuania are willing to increase their levels of defence costs to two per cent of gross domestic product,” Rõivas said.
The Prime Ministers agreed that the situation in the field of energy security is becoming better – the floating LNG terminal is operating in Lithuania and Estonia and Finland have agreed on connecting the markets and also on the establishment of a regional terminal.
“Along with the establishment of the gas pipe between Lithuania and Poland, the Baltic States and Finland should be connected to the rest of the European gas market by 2020, which ensures that we are not dependent on single gas source,” Rõivas said.
It was noted that it is important to rapidly move forward with synchronising the Baltic States with the electricity system of Central Europe.
In addition to security and energy issues, the Prime Minister also discussed cooperation projects, such as the Rail Baltic project and digital cooperation.
“I am glad that the transport connection project has been successfully launched and the activities stay on track. In order to ensure that the joint company of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania could operate more effectively, we agreed with the heads of state and government that an agreement between countries will be concluded by January 2015, at the latest,” the Prime Minister said.
According to Rõivas, it is also positive that from now on, three Baltic States are able to jointly digitally sign documents. “At the moment, the solution is not user-friendly yet due to different digital signing formats, but work is now in progress to improve this situation,” Rõivas said and added that Estonia’s plan is to introduce a common digital signature file format between the three countries, as it already is between Estonia and Finland. “It would be the most convenient solution from the users’ perspective,” he said.
The discussion results were also formulated in a joint declaration.