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MOFA receives Lithuania application to open office in Taiwan

ROC Central News Agency

03/26/2022 02:53 PM

Taipei, March 26 (CNA) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on Saturday confirmed it has received an application from Lithuania to open a representative office in Taiwan.

The MOFA said it has expressed a sincere welcome to Lithuania to open an office in Taiwan and will provide necessary assistance.

The confirmation of the application received by the MOFA came after Aušrinė Armonaitė, Lithuania's economy and innovation minister, said in a recent interview with CNA that her country has been well-prepared to open an office in Taiwan.

"We are fully ready to open Lithuanian trade office," Armonaitė said. "And I just sent a letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan, so that we could receive the official certificate so that we can open it officially but the preparatory work is already being conducted. And we are fully ready now."

While confirming the MOFA received the application, the ministry's deputy spokesperson Tsuei Ching-lin (崔靜麟) told CNA that after Foreign Minister Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) announced on July 20, 2021, that Taiwan would open a representative office in Vilnius, Lithuania also started a law amendment process to set up an office in Taiwan. The Taiwanese Representative Office opened on Nov. 18.

In late September 2021, Lithuania's parliament passed a legal revision that gave the green light to the country to open a representative office in countries like Taiwan with which the Baltic state does not have formal diplomatic relations.

At the time when the law amendment was passed, Armonaitė had said the move by the parliament will allow the country to explore overseas business opportunities by forging closer economic ties with countries such as Taiwan.

The MOFA said both Taiwan and Lithuania are at the strategic forefront of defending democracy and freedom, and have become two like-minded partners in safeguarding their shared ideas and values.

The MOFA added both countries have also lent support to each other to take on the COVID-19 pandemic and to overcome the difficulties posed by the disease.

The ministry said it firmly believes that after an office has been established on each side, Taiwan and Lithuania will step up cooperation in a wide range of fields, such as post-epidemic economic recovery, trade and investment, education and scientific research, as well as security in a supply chain.

Lithuania faces increasing political and economic pressure from Beijing over its decision to allow the use of the word "Taiwanese" in the name of Taiwan's representative office in the Baltic state.

Taiwan typically uses "Taipei Economic and Cultural Office" or "Taipei Representative Office" as the name for its de facto embassies in most countries, mainly due to the host country's preference to avoid any semblance of treating Taiwan as a separate country due to Beijing's "one China" principle.

(By Huang Ya-shih, Chen Yun-yu, Joseph Yeh and Frances Huang)

Enditem/cs