Zwitserland praat in Litouwen met EU over relatie en samenwerking (en)

On 29 July in Vilnius, Linas Linkevičius, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania and Didier Burkhalter, Head of the Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland discussed bilateral and multilateral cooperation, priorities of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, and relations between the EU and Switzerland.

“Lithuania’s Presidency of the EU Council is striving for an efficient and mutually beneficial cooperation between the EU and Switzerland,” the Lithuanian Foreign Minister said. During the Presidency, decisions are to be made on the institutionalisation of relations between the EU and Switzerland.

L.Linkevičius has also invited Swiss companies to look into business opportunities in Lithuania more actively. Both counterparts agreed that the bilateral cooperation still had a lot of untapped potential in the area of trade and investment. In 2012, Lithuanian exports to Switzerland increased by one-fourth and imports by 27 per cent.

L. Linkevičius thanked Switzerland for its financial assistance to Lithuania and other countries that joined the EU after 2004. The Foreign Minister expressed his belief that the cooperation programmes would be sustained in the future.

When speaking about multilateral cooperation, L. Linkevičius thanked Switzerland for its support to Lithuania’s aspirations to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and to Lithuania’s bid for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council in 2014-2015. The Foreign Minister also promised support to Switzerland’s Chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 2014.