H.E. Mr. Eduardas Borisovas, Ambassador of the Republic of Lithuania to the Republic of Croatia, visited the University of Rijeka Rectorate, where he met with the Rector, Prof. Snježana Prijić Samaržija, Ph.D., and Vice-rector for Studies, Students and QA, Prof. Marta Žuvić, Ph.D. The Ambassador was accompanied by Mrs. Giedré Šidagyté-Gudaitiené, First Secretary at the Embassy.
Prompted by the wave of migration and numerous conflicts on the European and global scale, the participants touched on the topic of brain drain and discussed how to attract more foreign students and make study programs more attractive and adapt them to modern trends in the labor market.
Rector Prijić Samaržija mentioned the excellent cooperation with Vilnius University and Vytautas Magnus University, especially within the scope of the SPEAR project. UNIRI’s participation in the project yielded very good results – the University of Rijeka became the first university in Croatia with an institutional Gender Equality Plan.
As Ambassador Borisovas was one of the many guests who watched this year’s International Carnival Parade, he is delighted with Rijeka and its people, and the preservation of traditional customs. He especially praised significant investments in transport and port infrastructure, the energy sector, and digitization, which, the Ambassador claims, is precisely what connects our two countries.
As Rector Prijić Samaržija mentioned Rijeka’s focus on 3 main areas – tourism, the maritime sector and health care – the Ambassador mentioned that pharmaceutical studies in Lithuania are closely related to the concept of life sciences, and every two years, scientists, exhibitors, and start-up companies stakeholders operating in the field of life sciences gather in Lithuania at the networking event called Life Sciences Baltics.
Since from 1992 to 1994 he was the Charge d’Affaires of the Republic of Lithuania in the then Czechoslovakia, he is very well acquainted with the process in the early 1990s that eventually led to the disintegration of Czechoslovakia and the creation of two new countries: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. During his long diplomatic career, he was the Lithuanian ambassador to Poland, the Consul General in the Russian Federation, Permanent Representative of Lithuania to the UN Office and other international organizations in Geneva. He is now the second Lithuanian ambassador residing in Zagreb.
