The letter of the eight was followed on 6 February by a letter from the Vilnius group comprising Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia which effectively supported a US military intervention in Iraq [REF].
By expressing support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq - by that point seemingly inevitable - the Vilnius letter was a public rebuke by ten EU candidates of France's and Germany's vocal opposition to American and British policy.