History
It was founded in May 1993 by the right wing of the Reform Movement of Lithuania, led by Vytautas Landsbergis, who had led Lithuania to independence. In the 1996 national elections, it secured 40% of the vote and returned 70 deputies to the Seimas, but, in 2000, it was reduced to 8.6% and 9 deputies.
After Lithuania's admission to the European Union in 2004, it won two seats in the election to the European Parliament, one of whom was Vytautas Landsbergis, who sit in the EPP-ED Group. At the 2004 election to the Seimas, the party won 14.6% of the popular vote and 25 out of 141 seats.
Until the merger with Lithuanian Union of Political Prisoners and Deportees and Right Union of Lithuania), it was known just as Homeland Union (Lithuanian Conservatives). The last change of the name was a result of the merger with the Lithuanian Nationalist Union on 11 March 2008, and the Lithuanian Christian Democrats on 17 May 2008, after which the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats became Lithuania's largest party with more than 18,000 members.
At the 2008 legislative election, Homeland Union won 19.69% of the national vote and 45 seats in the Seimas: 20 more than in 2004. Becoming the largest party in the Seimas, it formed a coalition government with the Liberal Movement, Liberal and Centre Union, and National Resurrection Party. Together, they held a majority of 80 out of 141 seats in the Seimas, and the Homeland Union's leader, Andrius Kubilius, became Prime Minister for a second time.
In June 2011, the Lithuanian Nationalist Union declared its withdrawal from the party.
Read more about this topic: Homeland Union
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)