An international conference “Lithuania in the Europen Union: values that we protect, changes that we seek” was organized by the Lithuanian Government and the family of big business organizations, with “Penki kontinentai“ Communication Center  among them, in Vilnius.

It was a kind of a Day of Lithuania, as follows from the name of the conference, where the representatives of the Republic – the Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas, the minister on foreign affairs Antanas Valionis, the minister of agriculture Petras Èësna, and the members of different business spheres – set out a “review” of the Republic. The “commission” of the conference, which subject was “come visit us!”, were guests from EU and the representatives of the world business.

Lately there have been many difficulties in the  field of investment. According to Minister Èësna, if the upturn of the direct investment in 2002 was bigger than 20% and denotation of the absolute numbers was the same as both Latvian and Estonian, the tempo of the past year has decreased. Especially in the field of foreign investment. But the Minister indicated a positive feature of this process: a rise of national capital activity. As it was with past year’s privatization: all large objects were bought out by Lithuanian companies, no matter, if they were the western distributing networks or spirituous companies.  

There are no bad things that do not turn to good ones. Both ministers indicated the geopolitical position of Lithuania and an importance of the bridge between the East and the West in their reports, and also the Lithuanian efforts to connect its western and eastern points -  the electrical energetic, gas pipe lines, railway and other lines. 

The President of the Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists (LPK) Jonas Karèiauskas also mentioned that.  He said the marketability of Lithuanian companies was configuring for a long time, and the national light industry felt the great pressure from “third world” cheap man power and dumping prices. He specified an importance of security’s methods from “Byelorussias and Chinas” in a field of internal market of EU, expressing solidarity and exhortation to the Lisbon strategy, an ambition aim of that is to overtake the scientic-technological and social economical level of Japan and USA till 2010. Also he suggested to the EU Viable Union to organize a control – periodical monitoring – as a performance of the requirements of the members of EU, springing from a task to expand a main economic marketability.  

The President and General Director of “Omnitel” Antanas Zabulis also mentioned an interesting number in this field. According to the general developing level Lithuania is a third country and its position is in the end of the world’s array. But in the IT development Lithuania dominates in the 38 position. Telling about the growth of export rates of computer products and the leap of the Republic in the field of informational technologies (according to sent SMS per capita we are nearly the leaders in the world), providing a number of examples he said that it is the result of the symbiosis of the state and the private sector, which was established by the mechanism of the aliance „Window into the future“. The project is unique as the initiator of its objective – to achieve avarage access to Internet in the EU in three years and to encrease the IT part from 0,7 to 3% by 2015 – was private capital and only later did the state join it after evaluating the prospect of the opportunity.

Lithuanian Trade Chamber President Darius Mockus, distinguished two problems which obstruct the development of Lithuanian business when talking about the current situation. The first one is lack of qualification which is already felt and will be felt even more after joining the EU because of emigration of qualified specialists. Ant the second one is the dependence on imported energy sources.

According to Mockus, the perfect model of national economy should look like the symbiosis of Western technologies and Eastern materials. Therefore attention should be paid towards the Eastern direction. It is problematic that Lithuania can invest in the Western direction but we could also be moving in the Eastern direction. Also this move coincided with the interests of Western business which could also invest through Lithuania. However, travels East are only episodic and accidental due to rather big risks. That is where the help of the state would come in very handy if it would share the risk.

Another topic of the conference: there should be no two speed Europe. It was said today by the Prime Minister Brazauskas, contradicting those who are for such EU constitutional order where the main vote is with the big and powerful countries, and the small ones only carry out peripheral functions in their shadow. It is the contradiction to such tendencies that drives Lithuania to be solidarity with small countries. “If we want to create a united Europe we should create it for all. There should be no two Europes, there should be one Europe and today we are in a united Europe,“ – he said in the press conference where there were quite a few foreign reporters. Valionis calmed him down by saying that Lithuania will never a periphery if it will be active and energetic in its policy which we (i.e. diplomats) “try to be”. By the way this term was started to be used in the political discourse last December when the Chairman of the European Commission Roman Prodi said that two speed Europe is inevitable, if there will be no unanimity on voting methods for which and the Constitution no agreement could be reached. Then the efforts of Germany and France to gain voting priority were blocked by Spain and Poland. And it was only the first serious clash when the new members – in fact, Poland – displayed their opposition. Now the time to show the character and to demand equal rights for the new “tensome” will be this week’s Summit meeting in Brussels.

For more information go to the website of Lithuanian industry confederation (www.lpk.lt) and the websites of other conference organizations.

The sponsors of the conference “Lithuania in the European Union: values that we protect, changes that we seek“ are oil company “Yukos“ (www.yukos.com), “Maþeikiø nafta“ (www.nafta.lt), “Lietuvos geleþinkeliai“ (www.litrail.lt), “Penki kontinentai“ (www.5ci.lt), association “Linava“ (www.linava.lt) and others.