Forgotten world (38): Lithuania

Travelling from north to south, Lithuania is the third of the three Baltic states. Like the other two, it was absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1940, regained its independence with the collapse of the USSR in 1991, and became a member of the European Union in 2004.
Lithuania has a population of 3.4 million and its capital is Vilnius. It does not have as serious a problem of ethnic Russians as its Baltic neighbours Estonia and Latvia.
Lithuania has had 14 governments in 15 years. However, the country has embraced market reform and, in the run up to and period following EU entry, it saw very strong economic growth. It applied to join the eurozone but was rejected because the inflation rate was too high.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 7:24 am and is filed under World current affairs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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