17/07/2020 (Agence Europe) – At the opening of the EU summit on Friday 17 July, Gitanas Nausėda, the President of Lithuania, told his counterparts of his fears regarding Russia’s rewriting of history (see EUROPE 12483/22). “This creates additional concerns for Russia’s close neighbours”, he said when on arrival at the summit, adding that this was becoming a “systematic policy regarding historical facts”. “We need to do something about it. We need to choose a more proactive policy, I mean instructions from the EU to explain to our Russian partner that we cannot tolerate actions of this nature and that these policies will have an impact on EU-Russia relations”, he said. He reminded his counterparts that the Second World War had meant enormous suffering for European countries, and warned that we must not “allow this history to be repeated once again”. (CG)