Some Lithuanian thoughts
Published on
by Graziella
Back from our lunch. I bumped into a friend of mine at the Council restaurant. Jurgita Zemaityte is the Brussels correspondant of an Lithuanian radio station. "We are only three Lithuanian here. The other two are working for the national TV channels." She did already two reportages on the Council´s discussions between yesterday and today. "I had to be creative!
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Contrary to us, this is not the first Council for Jurgita. "This one is not exiting, really. Those discussions on the future of Europe have been going on since some years already." She was at the Laeken Council back in 2001. "This was a great Council to cover. All the Member States were eager to give Europe a new face." Six years after, momentum is gone. In the meanwhile, Lithuania has joined the club. But the government will be happy with any agreement. In general, Lithanians see Europe as positive for their economy. They are aware that, as a small country, they don´t have that much weight and need to build coalitions with others.
"One thing that bothered us was that we will have to wait for the Euro." The country nearly fulfilled the stringent criteria of low inflation. This would have supported tourism. "Our visitors do not come only for the beauty of Vilnius, they want to discover all three Baltic states one after the other". But changing currencies makes it less attractive.