News

On 2-3 February in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Raimundas Karoblis participated in the informal meeting of the EU’s foreign affairs ministers responsible for trade.

Lithuania’s Foreign Vice-Minister discussed the ongoing EU-US trade talks, granting market economy status to China during antidumping investigations, the future of the multilateral trading system in the world and further activities of the World Trade Organization (WTO) following the WTO’s Tenth Ministerial Conference, which took place in Nairobi on 17 December 2015.

As regards the ongoing EU-US trade talks, Lithuania’s Foreign Vice-Minister noted that a study showed that Lithuania would receive the maximum economic benefit among the EU member states, if the EU concluded a new generation free trade agreement with the United States of America and started to apply it.

“2016 is a very important year for the EU-US trade talks. We have to strive for a better and deeper agreement, which would include not only a commitment to reduce tariffs, but also ambitious commitments to liberalise trade in services, public procurement, and to improve regulatory convergence across the Atlantic. This would create the greatest added value for our exporters,” said Lithuania’s Foreign Vice-Minister.

According to Lithuania’s Foreign Vice-Minister, the EU’s trade policy must not only significantly contribute to opening up a world of new opportunities to EU businesses in third countries, but also to maintain effective trade defence measures against unfair trade.

“Only a balanced trade policy will contribute significantly to the creation and maintenance of employment in the countries of the European Union,” said Karoblis.

For more information about the meeting, please read here.