Sadauskis, Andriejus

Within the last four years, Lithuania has faced different foreign policy challenges due to geopolitical situations such as the Ukraine-Russia war, the migration crisis on the border with Belarus, and the conflict with China. After opening a Taiwanese representative office in Vilnius, China downgraded diplomatic relations with Lithuania. The purpose of the article is to assess the impact of the changes on international economic relations between Lithuania and China. The paper employs descriptive statistics, correlation-regression, sensitivity analysis, and agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis. The research is based on the impact of international economic relations on international trade by analyzing separately imports and exports. Our research fills a gap in international relations and globalization theory by focusing on international collaboration between small and large countries, while the large country implements economic sanctions. In the context of Lithuania, exports to China and imports from China comprise a small percentage in the structure of international trade. Lithuania’s GDP level reacts sensitively to changes in export and import data only if they change drastically (over 50%).

In recent decades, humanity has had a significant negative impact on the environment. This problem can be solved only by establishing a rational environmental management policy and ensuring an effective financial policy in the context of balancing emissions and expenditures on environmental protection measures. The purpose of this article is to analyze the efficiency of financing environmental protection measures by determining the dependence of pollutant emissions on environmental protection expenditures in Ukraine and the European Union. The following methods were used for the study: analysis, synthesis, generalization, comparison, specification, and statistical and graphical methods. The statistical information was systematized on the basis of open data from the Open Budget web portal, the State Statistics Service, and Eurostat. This study identified the dynamics of revenues from environmental taxes in Ukraine; taxes on air emissions prevail. Most of the expenditures are made from the state budget. According to the functional classification, environmental expenditures are mainly aimed at preventing and eliminating environmental pollution. The dynamics of capital investments in environmental protection were also studied. To assess the effectiveness of the state policy in the field of environmental protection, we analyzed the dependence of pollutant emissions in Ukraine, Poland, and Romania on the amount of environmental expenditures and investments in this area and revenues from environmental tax. In Ukraine, the amount of pollutants released into the atmosphere depends mostly on investments in this area; in Poland—on revenues from environmental taxes; and in Romania—on expenditures on environmental protection. It has been established that the obtained models are adequate and can be used to build future forecasts of pollutant emissions. Directions for the development of financial and environmental policy are proposed. Post-war restoration of the environmental situation should be carried out on the basis of sustainable development, focusing on the European Green Deal A triple-task approach should be implemented, including environmental restoration, the minimization of negative climate change and balanced use of resources, and the expansion of powers of the relevant ministry with a focus on the strategic goals of the state policy. It is necessary to develop methodological recommendations according to international standards to assess the real state of the environment.