ELTA

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This article is about the Lithuanian news agency. For the Greek mail agency, see Hellenic Post.

ELTA is a Lithuanian news agency based in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. It is the largest national English Language Teachers' Association in Serbia.^[1]

ELTA was founded in 1920 in Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania, by Juozas Eretas, the first director of the agency, a literature professor, publicist, and public figure of Swiss descent who sought to make the ELTA news wire as efficient and reliable as a "Swiss watch".

Between 1920-1940, ELTA cooperated closely with the most prominent foreign agencies - its five teletypes used to send news from Reuters, DNB, HAVAS, STEFANI and TASS.

Between 1926-1927, the director of ELTA was Justas Paleckis, who later in 1940 was installed as Premier Minister by the Soviets.

When Soviet troops occupied Lithuania in 1940, ELTA was incorporated as a part of the USSR information service known as TASS and relayed news from Moscow over the period 1940-1990. With the recovery of national sovereignty in 1990, ELTA also re-established its independence from TASS and its direct contacts with leading global agencies. In 1996, ELTA became an independent (non state-owned) national news agency. Now, ELTA is a stock company.

Today, ELTA successfully cooperates with foreign news agencies such as Reuters, ITAR-TASS, DPA, PAP and others.