Each presidency aims to manage the Council properly and to fulfil its functions as described in the Treaties. We’ll work within those functions, said Raimundas Karoblis, Permanent Representative of Lithuania to the EU.

Karoblis warned that Europe is still in a crisis situation, marked by an absence of growth and facing an urgent need to tackle unemployment: particularly youth unemployment.

The ambassador said that the priorities of Lithuania’s EU Council Presidency fall under three pillars:

1. ‘A credible Europe’: this includes credible finances, fiscal discipline, creating the banking union, and a more credible EU for citizens, for example regarding justice and human rights.
2. Growth and employment: implementing Single Market Act 1; advancing on Single Market Act 2; and making progress on the Digital Agenda, the internal energy market, and the Baltic Sea Strategy.
3. ‘Open Europe’: November’s Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius will focus on “do-ables”, for example signing the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) and the Deep and Comprehensive Free-Trade Agreement (DCFTA) with Ukraine.

“We want [to focus on] deliverables with other countries” including Moldova, Armenia and Georgia, said Karoblis, expressing hope of making progress with Moldova in the field of mobility. He argued that it is in the EU’s interest to bring neighbouring countries closer to European values.

Other priorities of the Lithuanian EU Council Presidency include trade (for example, EU FTAs with the USA and Japan, and an EU investment agreement with China), enlargement (depending on the outcome of the June Summit), and legal migration (for example of intra-corporate transferees, researchers and students).

He warned that the German elections may affect the calendar of the Lithuanian EU Council Presidency, but said he did not expect them to affect its substance. He said that final political decisions on the more sensitive dossiers might not be taken until November and December.