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On 31 January – 1 February, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Petras Vaitiekūnas paid a working visit to Helsinki, where he met with President of Finland Tarja Halonen, Minister of Foreign Affairs Illka Kanerva, Minister of Migration and European Affairs Astrid Thors and member of the Finnish Parliament, Chairman of the Grand Committee (EU Affairs) Erkki Tuomioja.

During the meetings bilateral relations between Lithuania and Finland and important issues of the European Union agenda were discussed: common EU external energy policy, Neighbourhood policy in the East, EU relations with Russia and Central Asian countries, cooperation among the Nordic countries, the Baltic States and Central Asian countries.

Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania and Finland discussed issues that are important to the current Finland's chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and to all the international community: the situation in Kosovo and elections in Serbia. Finland's Minister of Foreign Affairs expressed trust that Russia would give a chance to the OSCE election observation mission to observe the upcoming Presidential election in March in this country.

Minister P.Vaitiekūnas made a request to cooperate closer with Finland, in order to profit from the experience of chairmanship of the OSCE. Lithuania shall hold chairmanship of this organisation in 2011.

 Ministers of Foreign Affairs also discussed the possible common action of the countries that had an external EU border in the East, more specifically, a possible cooperation to improve the border infrastructure.

Speaking about the North European Gas Pipeline, which is intended to be constructed on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, Finland's Minister of Foreign Affairs informed that Finland was getting prepared for the exhaustive environmental impact analysis, along with the national and international law. 

During the meeting with President of Finland Tarja Halonen, major attention was devoted to the environmental issues and the EU’s Neighbourhood in the East. Finland's President expressed concern about the big contamination of the Baltic Sea. The interlocutors agreed that only a more active regional cooperation among the Baltic Sea region countries can help to solve the most important issues and that it was necessary to reconsider the formats of regional cooperation and to prepare the Baltic Sea region strategy as fast as possible.

During the conversation with Finland's Minister of Migration and European Affairs Astrid Thors, head of Lithuanian diplomacy discussed the issues of migration in Finland and Lithuania, the EU initiatives in this area.