Buried in last Wednesday’s €200bn European Commission economic recovery plan for Europe was a proposal that sent waves of relief through Lithuanian policymaking circles. This was the idea of allocating €5bn for trans-European energy connections.

A large chunk of this money is destined for Lithuania, the aim being to reduce the dangers that face the country after the planned closure of its Ignalina nuclear power plant on December 31, 2009. Ignalina supplies 70 per cent of Lithuania’s electricity, and when the plant is shut down Lithuania will be almost entirely dependent on Russia for its energy.

For sure, Russia has no obvious interest in starving Lithuania of electricity. The lines that send Russian electricity to Lithuania also send it through Lithuania to Kaliningrad, the Russian territory to the west. Still, given it’s only 17 years since Lithuania gained independence from the Soviet Union, and given the icy relations between Russia and its tiny neighbour, any form of dependence is understandably an unnerving prospect from a Lithuanian point of view.

As officials in Vilnius point out, Lithuania relies for gas on a single Russian pipeline that passes through Belarus. As for oil, the Russians closed down the ironically named Druzhba (“Friendship”) pipeline in 2006 for repair work that mysteriously never seems to get finished.

Once Ignalina is closed, “the probability of disaster is not very high, but it is probable that there will be serious problems”, says Aleksandras Abisala, the government’s special representative on energy security.

The Lithuanians have been hammering away at their European Union colleagues on this subject for so long that, according to those in the know, French President Nicolas Sarkozy finally decided to raise the matter with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the recent EU-Russia summit in Nice. The response was very revealing of the present peppery mood in the Kremlin.

On the question of reopening the Druzhba pipeline, Medvedev committed himself to absolutely nothing. On the question of promising to maintain electricity deliveries to Lithuania from January 2010 onwards, Medvedev in effect said: “Nicolas, why are you talking to me about this? If the Lithuanians think they have a problem and want to talk about it, tell them to come and see me.”

In other words, Sarkozy’s efforts to speak up for Lithuania and give Medvedev a demonstration of what EU solidarity means in practice hit a big brick wall.

Lithuania had better receive some of that €5bn in EU funds quickly, or it will be a bitingly cold winter in 2010.