Grybauskaitė: Co-operation with Poland is really fruitful

“Lithuania and Poland purse the same goals,” President Dalia Grybauskaitė stated in an interview for a weekly magazine, “Veidas.”

“Lithuanian-Polish relations are surrounded by a great deal of myths; people strive to attach to them negative connotations, although our cooperation is very fruitful indeed,” Grybauskaite said.

The President pointed out that Lithuania had been collaborating with Poland on the accomplishment of mutual projects of strategic importance for years, i.a. joint electricity and gas interconnection, Rail Baltica project.

“Lithuania assesses challenges related to the security of our countries just the same as Poland does. We belong to NATO, and during the NATO summit which will take place next year in Warsaw we will pursue the same goals, that is the long-term presence of NATO forces in the region, constant updating of defence plans, and applying other disincentives,” Grybauskaite highlighted.

The future government’s mission

On Tuesday the President commented also on issues concerning the next year’s election – “The most important problems for the future government are the ageing society, migration, and black economy,” President Dalia Grybauskaitė stated.

“The issues that the government will not address will be inherited by the next crew,” she added.

Grybauskaitė is sure that the accomplishment of several strategic projects (the introduction of euro currency, LNG terminal, energy bridges), whose execution was started by previous crews, is the greatest merit of the present government.
The Head of Lithuania claims that, when it comes to structural reforms, the current governmental “strategy of peace” is ineffective.

“In its programme the government has pledged to deal much with fields of social and health protection, as well as education. However, in the last few months it’s been hard to expect any more decisive steps,” the President commented.
The parliamentary election will take place in the autumn 2016.