Justinas Mickus
332 posts
Justinas Mickus
@JMickus
policy analyst at Lithuanian Government’s Strategic Analysis Centre; assoc. researcher @ ECFR + EESC. Resilient Futures Fellow 2026 w/ Visegrad Insight
Vilnius, Lithuania Katılım Mayıs 2012
1K Takip Edilen430 Takipçiler
Europe, but I expect you mean “the EU” has nothing to do with it. It is simply three companies working together. That’s as it should be. Same goes for ESA. The EU tries to get control by bribing them with money but ESA was formed without the EU. There are many such cooperative business relationship. To try to take vicarious reflected credit for that is petty and childish.
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Justinas Mickus retweetledi
💥What we’ve all feared is happening: Hungarian Russia expert András Rácz wrote three days ago about a potential Russia-backed false flag attack in Serbia targeting the gas pipeline to Hungary. The same information had already reached multiple journalists, including myself, weeks earlier, from sources connected to Hungarian government circles.
Now Viktor Orbán has announced that Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić informed him about “explosives of devastating power” found at the gas pipeline connecting the two countries. Orbán and his propaganda machine are already amplifying the news everywhere, with the prime minister convening his security cabinet.
It remains unclear what measures the government might take using this alleged false flag operation as a pretext. But if the second part of the information we received also proves true, Orbán could declare a state of emergency, significantly affecting the election campaign—which he is currently losing—and potentially disrupting the organization of the April 12 election.
The opposition Tisza Party has been widening its lead to 15–20 points, if not more. Orbán accuses them of being "Ukrainian agents" for months. His propaganda would very soon link the Serbian false-flag both to Ukraine and the Tisza Party, I have no doubts about that.
I encourage all foreign reporters covering the Hungarian election to pay close attention and not fall for the government’s propaganda or the narratives pushed by its pundits on the Orbán government payroll, including here on X.
The situation could soon be very serious.
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@ischinger It neither governs most of EU decision-making nor is something chiefly opposed by Berlin — quite the opposite. Institutions and rules are not what holds the EU back, it is member state politics and interests.
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Wadephul is right. But this will only be meaningful if Berlin starts a real initiative. One option to get started would be for Berlin and like minded partners to renounce the use of the veto, and invite others to follow.
dpa news agency@dpa_intl
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul says the EU should abandon the unanimity principle that governs most of its decision-making nordot.app/14130767161774…
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Justinas Mickus retweetledi
'If you cannot defend yourself through defence, you need to resort to deterrence — and here, CEE is succeeding.' — @edwardlucas. No one speaks about action better than our fellows and the experts we brought into Day 2 of the Resilient Futures Fellowship Masterclass. shorturl.at/NvX6e
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@NicholasVinocur It’s been a refrain of the Commission since Juncker’s scenarios and veto review initiative in 2018; these are right questions to ask, but by now the key question should be why Com has achieved so little and how it can change its tactics
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Von der Leyen making the case for faster, more agile EU foreign policy is a bigger deal than it may appear. She is going up against tradition-bound states that are loathe to give up any veto rights to Brussels
Ursula von der Leyen@vonderleyen
We can build a foreign policy that makes us stronger at home. More influential globally. And a better partner to countries around the world. That is a core pillar of European independence. That protects our interests and advances our values. twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…
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@ThatChristinaG @MeDicenLiv Importantly it’s only North America that switched time this weekend, and in N America only Cuba recognizes the Intnl Woman’s day…
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Losing an hour of time/sleep on International Women's Day feels like the most on brand thing this world has to offer.
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@BrigidLaffan Agreed; my sources told me the logic was to both skip technical debates (that favour states that have a very economical approach to sanctions) and bake-in greater political ownership (and favours agile govts where permrep-capital coordination is fast).
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@JMickus I think this underlines just how serious the agenda is.
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A significant but rarely identified shift in EU is the increasing role played by COREPER II.Ambassadors are representatives of member states in Brussels -the eyes & ears-& the defenders of the preferences of their member states. Weekly meetings have shifted to 2/3 meetings a week
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@BrigidLaffan Understood and agreed; the role may have already been strong and established but the intensity of their work has indeed exploded. Also interesting to see how on some issues (eg sanctions) rules were changed to sidestep lower level coord formats & go straight to COREPER
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@JMickus The increase in meetings is the point I
Want to make.
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Justinas Mickus retweetledi
Best Olympics uniform was made for Lithuania for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. This was their first Olympic games after gaining independence from the Soviet Union. Designed by Issey Miyake. Fabric was cut and sewn using heat, not shears or sewing machines.
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Justinas Mickus retweetledi
Fascinating and very long post on Facebook from Lithuanian FM Budrys - thanks @JMickus for sharing - that excoriates the previous government's values-based foreign policy but also distances Budrys from the Beijing reset proposed by his PM.
facebook.com/story.php?stor…
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@fbermingham You may find Budrys’ long read FB post interesting in that regard (can send you via message)
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My sense having spoken to people in Vilnius, inc senior folks in Ruginienė party - unlikely office is renamed:
1. SDs are in dire straits electorally
2. It would require Taipei's buy-in otherwise bilateral ties are dead
3. PM not seen to be "well-versed" in international affairs
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This would be big...
Lithuanian prime minister says they made a strategic mistake by allowing a Taiwanese representative office to open in Vilnius under the name “Taiwanese"
“I think Lithuania really jumped in front of a train and lost"
lrt.lt/en/news-in-eng…
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@lugaricano Was politics and recruitment patterns therein much different when we had strong+competent govts (pick for ideology). Same principles applied then and now, and in between; it is true but not an inhibiting constraint. Corporate grease polls not much better too
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A lot of adverse selection. This is my experience in politics as well.
By the way, those who push for multiple industrial policies and for a more active role of the state never engage with this problem.
Rush@exRAF_Al
A reminder. Dominic Cummings was right on the money all those years ago when he forensically analysed why a particular type of person from a particular type of job or career went into politics, and why some didn’t. ‘Incisive’ isn’t the word.
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@stefanauer_hku As others have observed, more conventional comparative political economy insights — the role and relation of private financing in US/EU, educational systems — may explain the respective tendencies for “risky radical innovation” vs “safe and incremental improvements” better
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@stefanauer_hku There are <10 “super big tech companies”; in no sector is the “sell your company quick” dynamic as prevalent as in US tech, many startups are created to be sold rather than become companies. So it’s not primarily a US/EU division but something bigger. 1/2
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@nfergus 2/2 as for UA peace process, the sequence has always been US moves first, EU hurries to slow down / flesh out the follow thru. The Greenland kerfuffle does not prevent the EU+UK from doing so again, unless you assume miraculous + unstoppable breakthrough in UAE..?
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@nfergus And the EU pleas would have mattered because..? Did they matter before? Is it not the case that Europe has already lost the ability to steer MidEast affairs, as has been proven multiple times last year? Why would it then be the goal for the US? 1/2
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There is a rapidly forming narrative in the European and liberal media that the Europeans “won Davos”: primarily by getting Trump to “de-escalate” his demand that the United States acquire Greenland from Denmark. 1/8
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@joni_askola Why did you immediately drop the “principled” part in making these analogies?
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4/12 Pragmatism is often needed in life, but it can also be a cancer.
It was pragmatism that made us dependent on Russia, China, and the US.
It was pragmatism that gave Europe the Nord Stream pipelines.
We traded our long-term security for short-term comfort
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1/12 “Value-Based Realism” was a major theme at Davos.
It is being sold by Stubb and Carney as a smart, pragmatic path for the West, but I think it is a strategic trap.
Here is why this new realism might actually lead to managed decline 🧵
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@haugejostein @70sBachchan Crucial to note though: few ‘international leftists’ have ever made it to this stage of politics (not Davos specifically) after failure of NIEO and not all of it can be blamed on Western/capitalist obstruction; Carney himself became an unelected PM before Trump helped him in 2025
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Parts of the left are criticising Mark Carney's Davos speech for belatedly admitting the liberal establishment's complicity in perpetuating the facade of the international rules-based order — and for doing so only after it stopped working for Western middle powers.
I sympathise. But I think the international left — of which I consider myself part — should take this as a win.
I can't really think of many other establishment figures who've come out so hard against the facade of the international rules-based order. So kudos to Carney for doing so.
And kudos to Carney for, again, taking a principled stance against Trump. His integrity far exceeds that of cowardly leaders in Europe.
Carney's establishment politics is not my traditional brand of politics. But his speech was a win for left internationalism precisely because it breaks with what we traditionally hear from the establishment.
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@TheMichaelEvery Was Europe against the terms of the emerging deal before the “crisis”? If not, is it Europe’s weakness that resolved the crisis quickly, but the weakness of US bluff / threat that initially caused it?
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As flagged, the Greenland crisis was resolved quickly due to Europe's manifold geostrategic weaknesses, which markets like; yet it opens the door wider to a new world order, which markets don't understand and won't like when they finally do.
Against that backdrop, and building on our work on 'The Trump Plan', see this new piece on the 'Reverse Perestroika' being pushed by the US.
2026 is just getting started.
media.rabobank.com/m/25b5e7fd0ccc…
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