Foreign Ministry dissapointed in EU

May 12, 2005
By TBT staff

VILNIUS - Not everyone has been satisfied with the first year of EU membership, according to Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry. Ministry officials have criticized the EU’s foreign policy, relations with Ukraine, and warn that, in a few years, Lithuanian foreign policy may disappear as decision-making moves to Brussels.

“We have been rebuked for extremes almost all the time. We have failed to achieve anything the way we wanted, only compromises,” Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Albinas Januska said at a press conference on the EU Constitutional Treaty.

“We will have problems with [Javier] Solana,” Januska added, speaking of the head of the EU’s common foreign and security policy. “If we do not solve those problems, if we have no ambitions, there may be no Lithuanian foreign policy in several years time.”

The head of the European Commission’s delegation in Lithuania, Michael Graham, who attended the conference, told the Baltic News Service that he did not agree with Januska’s statements. Graham added that the EU was a constant compromise.

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