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The Lithuania Tribune, June 6, 2012Lithuania has made a fantastic progress in its preparations for its first presidency of the European Union in the second half of 2013, said Ambassador Raimundas Karoblis, the Permanent Representative of Lithuania to the EU.  Read the interview to the Lithuania Tribune about Lithuania’s preparation for the Presidency conducted on 29 May in the premises of the representation.

Lithuania Tribune:

Mister Ambassador, thank you so much for having us.
 
We would like to ask you a few questions about Lithuania’s preparation for the European Presidency, and other Lithuanian and European-related issues.
 
First of all I would like to ask how the preparations are going. Do you feel comfortable about it? Do you see any particularly weak or strong points?
 
Ambassador Karoblis:

Regarding the preparations for the Presidency, I think that we are in quite a good phase.
 
First of all, we have, I believe, the political will of all the parties that are represented in the Parliament. We also have full support from the government; we have the resolution of the Parliament regarding the preparations for Lithuania’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
 
This means that both the Parliament and the government have practically established the framework for all activities, which consists of two parts:
 
One, in regard to content and priority issues, and here I am glad that the first priority of Lithuania’s Presidency is the continuation of European policies such as those like financial stability, growth, unemployment, competitiveness, energy security and other issues. This means that the Lithuanian Presidency will fit into the actual situation in which the European Union is, and we will contribute to the solution of the EU problems.
 
Of course we have our national priorities as well, which also should fit into the EU programme. Among them are: energy security; Eastern Partnership, for which we have the Eastern Partnership Summit; Baltic Sea strategy, which is a usual issue for the Baltic and Nordic countries’ presidencies; and, probably, the protection of external borders, which would be a useful opportunity to bring attention from the whole European Union to countries which have a similar situation to ours in terms of external borders. This aspect is very important for the Schengen area and the application of its rules. We know the situation regarding the application of such rules is not a simple one in Europe.
 
So, the framework for all these issues is already established.
 
Secondly, there is, of course, the financial and logistic framework, in which there has also been substantial progress, on the basis of which we could work further. I have in mind, first of all, the budget of the Presidency. It is not a secret that quite a significant part of the allocations will go to our representation, the Permanent Representation of Lithuania to the European Union.
 
It is also worth mentioning that we have defined practically 95% of the chairpersons who will chair the various bodies of the Council of the European Union. The list of these chairpersons has already been established – both those who will chair groups from here in Brussels and also for those work chairing working groups from the capital.
 
So we think that we are in quite a good situation in terms of the preparation for the Presidency, and we also have the recognition from all the EU institutions and all countries which will have presidency quite soon. So, in general, the situation is quite satisfactory.
 
Of course, nothing and nobody is perfect and we also have some flaws. Some institutions in Lithuania are better prepared for the Presidency, while some others are not so well prepared. In some institutions the situation is, frankly speaking, is still quite poor, but we expect that we will somehow succeed in catching up in the progress and achieve the kind of improvements needed.
 
LT:
 
I suppose there is still quite enough time to catch up.
 
AK:
 
Well, today it is May 29, this means we have 13 months until the Presidency, and it is really not so much, having in mind that we will have general elections and, in one or another respect, the new government. It means that we will have a whole new group of chairpersons for the various Council formations.  So, we still have what to do.
 
For the moment, we need to prepare ourselves on the technical, civil service, and on the senior officials’ levels, but regarding the political level, of course, we will need to do our job during the first half of 2013.
 
Understandably, the tasks that await us already this year are not so simple. We need to catch up on the issues we still have problems with, but also on other issues, such as clearly identifying what will be the real substance of the Presidency: not only our national priorities, but also those which we will need to address according to the European Union’s legislative programme. Here, I would like to stress that the Presidency of Lithuania will not be evaluated according to the number of current or future national priorities that we have, but by how effective we are in implementing the main tasks expected from us – the EU legislative programme, which is not so simple.
 
LT:
 
So we are not going to have any particular policy that we would like to promote? Is it like we are going to concentrate mostly on EU matters rather than on our own policies?
 
AK:
 
I mentioned four issues, which could count as our national priorities, but we also need to answer to ourselves how it fits into the priorities or into the legislative plan programme of the European Union. We will definitely manage some of these issues but I am not sure about other issues – as time passes we will have to do something about them.
 
But very frankly speaking, the main task of the Permanent Representation in Brussels, as the main negotiating body and coordinator of legislative activities, is this legislative programme.
 
What does the task of fulfilling the legislative programme mean for us? Well, there are several factors: First of all, we must consider the cycle of the European Union institutions. The European Parliament will have elections in June of 2014; probably we will have the new Commission in July of 2014. This means that we are at the very end of the cycle of the European Union institutions. The busiest agenda for the Presidency, and in general for the Council and for the European Parliament, is that of this period.
 
It is no secret that the proposals of the Commission are sometimes late. Negotiations both in the Council and the European Parliament are also late. And the last chance, probably, to get an agreement, in particular the agreement between the Council and the European Parliament, is during our Presidency, during our term. So, for Greeks, as the last presidents of our trio – and of the current European Parliament term – there is only three and a half months, because the European Parliament generally works until the middle of April on legislation issues.
 
So, on these aspects we will have the most crowded agenda. It is the busiest period of the cycle of European Institutions.
 
It will contain such packages as the concrete follow-up legislation on the fiscal discipline and the fiscal compact, the issue which is now discussed. We will also have concrete legislation or Council conclusions, directives, etc, on the growth agenda and other competition issues.
 
We will have a package on financial services which is related to financial stability in Europe. We will have to deal with issues regarding with internal market, competitiveness, transport, and quite a lot of other areas that are really important both for Lithuania, as a part of the European Union, and for the whole European Union, considering the present economic conditions.
 
Another aspect, which is not less important than the first one is that our presidency will take place, we hope, immediately after the political agreement on the multi-annual financial perspective. Yes, we very much expect that the European Council will finalize it either during the Cypriot Presidency in December, or at least at the beginning of 2013 – not because we are afraid of the task, but because any later date would jeopardize proper implementation of the EU financialperspective.
 
So, we definitely need political agreement on European Council level as soon as possible, but what we will definitely have is [the adoption] of the regulations implementing the multi-annual financial framework.
 
Yes, good progress is already being made during the Danish Presidency and Cyprus will continue, but what is clear is that we will need to finalize these legal acts with the European Parliament. For example, the European Parliament is calculating 52 regulations in this field.
 
It all means that, firstly, we will need to get concrete results on the ordinary EU agenda – finalize it fully or reach an appropriate level. The second task is these regulations implementing the financial framework.
 
LT:
 
It sounds like it is going to be a very tough time.
 
AK:
 
It will be a tough time, but I think quite an interesting time also.