EU membership 'only path' for Lithuania, lawmakers told on year anniversary

Lithuania was bound to join the European Union as the only other option open to the Baltic state would have been a return to dictatorship, parliamentary speaker Arturas Paulauskas said Thursday.

"Lithuania's accession to the EU was inevitable. This may sound fatalistic but we indeed had no other choice, no other way, just the path to Europe, as 'another path' would have been a path back to the grip of dictatorship," he told a special meeting of parliament dedicated to the first anniversary of Lithuania's joining the EU.

"Fifteen years ago we left one union, which required effort, determination, and even blood, and joined a new union - the European Union," Paulauskas said.

Lithuania and its Baltic neighbours Estonia and Latvia were occupied by the Soviet Union from the end of World War II until 1991. The three countries were among 10 states, mostly in eastern and central Europe, to join the EU on May 1 last year.

Paulauskas slammed Euro-sceptics who have tried to draw parallels between Lithuania's assimilation into the Soviet Union and EU membership.

"Any attempt to draw a parallel between Lithuania's membership in the EU and the former membership in the Soviet Union is naive as it ignores history, ignores Lithuania's occupation," Paulauskas said.

The EU is "above all an organisation of economic welfare and social security, a guarantee of political stability, democracy, respect for human rights," he said.