The ceremony will be attended, among others, by members of the French Navy Honor Guard who are currently in Lithuania as part of NATO‘s Enhanced Forward Presence Battalion Battle Group.
The French contingent of the multinational battalion consists of nearly 300 troops. They have brought their own combat, supply and administrative equipment to Lithuania.
The canal linking the port of Klaipėda with the River Minija and eventually with the River Nemunas was hand dug between 1863 and 1873. It was named after Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany.