Lithuanian PM on progress strategy: I hope it won't become another document in drawer

VILNIUS – Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte hopes the country's State Progress Strategy: Lithuania 2050, now being drafted, will not become another document in a drawer.

On Monday, the prime minister took part in a remote presentation of the State Progress Strategy: Lithuania 2050 at the MO museum in Vilnius, and said "we would not want to make this process very bureaucratic".

"The main thing we would like to have is for those formats where thinking of and discussions about Lithuania's future take place naturally, between like-mined people, or sometimes between opponents with completely opposite opinions, to be the key input, and the government and ministries would in no way make it into just another document we have plenty of that we sign, put in a drawer and forget the next day," the prime minister said.

The government and the parliamentary Committee for the Future will draft the strategy and put it before the Seimas for approval during the parliament's spring session in 2023. The recently restored State Progress Council will also be involved in the drafting of this document.

According to the prime minister, whilst drafting the document, effort will be made "to avoid linear thinking when it seems that the future will be same as the present but a little bit better".

"We ourselves see that technological, social, climate and geopolitical changes might be hardly predictable and those trajectories can be fairly surprising," Simonyte said.