Lithuania: mobility of health professionals

The Republic of Lithuania is located along the south-eastern shore of the Baltic Sea and it shares borders with Poland and the Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian Federation to the south-west, with Bel-arus to the south-east and with Latvia to the north. Lithuania declared its renewed independence in 1990 as the first former Soviet Republic, it is a member of the Council of Europe (since 14 May 1993), NATO (since 29 March 2004) and the European Union (since 1 May 2004). On 21 December 2007 Lithuania joined the Schengen area, and on 30 March 2008 it lifted air border controls, thus becoming a full member of the Schengen Agreement. In 2010 the population of Lithuania was equal to 3.286 million inhabitants, which constitutes less than 1 per cent cent of the EU27 population), which shows that the population potential of the country is very small as for the EU and should be considered while analysing migratory flows. Additionally, the size of population in Lithuania has been decreasing in recent years (by around 400 thousand between 1990 and 2009). Rapid decrease in the number of population is conditioned by a low birth rate (the natural increase rate remains negative since 1995) and migratory flows – particularly in the post-accession period. [...]