By Marc Martorell Junyent
Marc is a journalist and researcher based in Munich, Germany. He covered the German-
Baltic Conference 2024 as a Young Journalist, following the work of Cluster A: AI in Refugee
Protection & Humanitarian Aid.
More than four months after the conclusion of the German-Baltic Conference 2024 in Vilnius, organized by the German-Baltic Future Foundation, some of the participants from that event returned to the Lithuanian capital.
It was March 4th, and the meeting place was in front of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, where the working meetings during the conference in October had taken place. This time, the final destination was the building right next to the library, namely the Lithuanian Parliament, or Seimas. The Seimas Palace was built in the 1970s in a typically grey and austere style to host the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. Nowadays, it is home to the legislative body of independent Lithuania, last renewed in the October 2024 elections. Following the elections, the Speaker of the Seimas is Saulius Skvernelis, from the Union of Democrats "For Lithuania".
The participants of the German-Baltic Conference 2024 who visited the Lithuanian parliament had been working within Cluster A. The cluster designed policy proposals for Lithuanian lawmakers concerning AI in Refugee Protection & Humanitarian Aid (a more detailed account of these recommendations, detailed in a final policy paper, can be found here). The three other clusters, which had developed policies on different areas and for different target countries, also had the opportunity to visit the respective parliaments in Tallinn, Riga, and Berlin.
In the Seimas, the Cluster A participants were received by two parliamentarians. One of them was Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, the leader of the Liberals' Movement, who had previously been the Speaker of the Seimas between 2020 and 2024. The other one was Matas Maldeikis, from the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats.
The meeting began with a brief introduction of the German-Baltic Future Foundation’s activities by the Deputy Head of the foundation’s Country Office in Lithuania, Indrė Aukštikalnienė. After this, the presentation was taken over by Sergej Stoma, who coordinated the work of Cluster A before and during the conference in October 2024. Stoma emphasized that, given the vulnerable situation of refugees and the obligation to protect their human rights, all recommendations in the policy paper had been crafted with the Do No Harm (DNH) principle in mind. The DNH principle, which plays an important role in development and humanitarian aid, seeks to limit or prevent the unintended negative effects that can arise from an external intervention into a crisis or conflict situation.
Following this, Cluster A participants Hanna Scholten, Adrian Krastev, Artjoms Bernatovics, and Maximilian Arndt introduced the main proposals in the cluster’s policy paper. Those participants who could not attend the event in person had the opportunity to follow it online. The presentation motivated questions by Čmilytė-Nielsen and Maldeikis, the two parliamentarians who hosted the Cluster A participants. Čmilytė-Nielsen, for instance, wanted to know how long it had taken for the group to craft the final policy paper, and also whether the proposals listed in the paper had already been implemented in other countries.
To this, Stoma, the head of cluster, replied that the process culminating in the policy paper had been a long one, starting with a very competitive process to participate in the conference, with around 70 applicants seeking to be members of Cluster A. Regarding the question on whether the policy recommendations had been applied elsewhere, Stoma noted he was aware of some proposals regarding AI and refugees in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.
After the meeting with the two Lithuanian parliamentarians, the visitors had the opportunity to tour the Seimas, accompanied by a guide who recounted the history of the parliament and Lithuania’s struggle for political independence. The current plenary room, inaugurated in 2007, is decorated with small Lithuanian and Ukrainian flags on the parliamentarians' tables. Although the visit took place on a Tuesday, one of the days (together with Thursday) when most of the sessions take place, there was no parliamentary session on March 4th due to a parliamentary break.
The guide invited the visitors to come back one week later, when the Seimas held an open-doors day to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Lithuania’s restored independence. The vast room where the declaration of independence was signed, now referred to as the Hall of the Act of 11 March, was also part of the tour. Until 2007, it hosted the plenary sessions. Nowadays, it is only used for special events, such as the swearing-in of new parliamentarians or, as recently as last 11 March, the official commemoration of Lithuania’s 35th anniversary as an independent state. During that event, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda spoke about how “the long-awaited rebirth of our nation, society and state unfolded in the bloom of reestablished Independence.” He added that “today, as we measure the distance we have travelled together, we realize that the greatest source of our strength has always been the unity of our nation.”
At the end of the meeting with the parliamentarians at the Seimas, Indrė Aukštikalnienė, the deputy head of the German-Baltic Future Foundation in Lithuania, explained that the German-Baltic Conference 2025 will be dedicated to the topic of security. The city that will host the next meeting was already announced last October, and it will be Riga, the capital of Latvia.