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On 5 November, the European Commission (EC) announced a report on the state of preparedness of the ten candidate countries accessing the European Union. Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania Antanas Valionis stated while commenting on the report: “It is satisfying that Lithuania is assessed as one of the best prepared countries for the membership in the European Union. It is a positive evaluation of Lithuania’s progress and consistent work of the diplomatic service. The current task of all the state institutions is to do everything required in order to fulfil thoroughly the will of the Lithuanian citizens conveyed by the referendum and this task is being consistently implemented. The EC has exactly “diagnosed” the areas, where further improvements need to be made in order to meet our negotiation commitments. Thus a lot of hard and demanding work lies ahead of us, so that the positive changes would be felt by every Lithuanian citizen, no matter what she or he would be – a student, a businessman, a farmer or a pensioner. We will not slow down the rate of preparations for the membership, but will draw even greater attention towards the issues of the Euro-Atlantic integration, so that Lithuania would access the European Union as a fully-fledged and well-prepared country.” The EC report on Lithuania states that the macroeconomic performance in the country has been particularly strong. As regards overall administrative and judicial capacity, sufficient conditions are in place for the implementation of the EU acquis by the date of accession. The report also concludes that Lithuania has reached a high level of alignment with the acquis in most policy areas. The EC in its report also indicates certain areas, where Lithuania needs to make enhanced efforts in order to complete its preparations for accession in five remaining months. The EU notes that Lithuania must take immediate actions to address two specific issues in order to eliminate drawbacks in preparations. This concerns the field of free movement of persons, relating to Lithuania’s preparations for mutual recognition of qualifications. It also concerns the area of fisheries, as regards inspection and control in relation to resource and fleet management. Since 1997 the EC regularly on the annual basis has evaluated the progress of legal approximation and enforcement in various areas of the preparation of EU membership in the acceding countries. This year’s report is of particular importance, as it is the last such EC assessment of Lithuania and the other nine acceding countries before they will become fully-fledged members of the European Union as of 1 May 2004.