No Lithuanian request to change office name: Wu

Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) yesterday said that Taiwan has not received any formal request to change the name of its representative office in Lithuania and would not yield on that issue even if asked to do so.

“The Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania” is a name that was agreed on in 2021 by the two governments after negotiations, who signed official documents to that effect, Wu said in a radio interview when asked about a reported proposal by Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda to change the name.

In an interview published on Tuesday by the Baltic News Service (BNS), Nauseda said that while he welcomed, in principle, the establishment of the representative office in Lithuania, “in the context of the stabilization of relations with China, I would see the need to change its name.”

The office’s name “sounds like a Taiwan mission, not a Taiwanese mission, and Beijing sees this as an attempt by Taiwan to act as an independent state,” Nauseda said in the BNS interview, published in English in the run-up to Lithuania’s presidential election on Sunday.

“The adjustment [of the name] could serve as Lithuania’s signal toward the normalization of diplomatic relations with China,” said Nauseda, who is seeking re-election.

Asked yesterday about Nauseda’s statements on the issue, Wu said it is normal for politicians in a democratic country to express different views on various issues, and it was not the first time that Nauseda had made such a suggestion.

However, in Lithuania, it is the prime minister, not the president, who is the head of government, Wu said.

He also said that the opposition parties in Lithuania do not support changing the office’s name, as they think it would hurt their country’s international reputation and indicate it was bowing to pressure from China.

In response to a question by the radio host, Wu said Taiwan had not received any official requests from the Lithuanian government to change the office’s name.

“I don’t think they will ask us to change it,” he said. “Even if they ask to sign a new agreement [on the Taiwan office’s name]we won’t accept that.”

Taiwan-Lithuania relations have grown over the past years, with the two sides signing an agreement in July 2021 to open reciprocal representative offices.

Taiwan opened its office in Vilnius on Nov. 18, 2021, while the Lithuanian Trade Representative Office officially opened in Taipei on Nov. 7, 2022.

Taiwanese representative offices are typically named the “Taipei Economic and Cultural Office” or “Taipei Representative Office,” in keeping with the host countries’ preference to avoid any references that would imply Taiwan is a separate country from China.

Beijing has sought to impose political and economic penalties on Lithuania for its decision to allow the inclusion of “Taiwanese” in the name of the office.

Beijing’s punitive measures have included recalling its ambassador to Lithuania, downgrading diplomatic relations, expelling the Lithuanian ambassador, suspending direct freight rail services to Lithuania and banning the country’s products.