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"The year 2002 brought a double success and a historic turning-point in Lithuanian foreign policy", Lithuanian Foreign Minister Antanas Valionis stated on 20 December in Vilnius at the conference "From Helsinki to Copenhagen. Stocktaking of the three years of Lithuania’s EU accession negotiations". According to the chief of Lithuanian diplomacy, "on looking back, we can assuredly claim that the success in Prague and Copenhagen is the expression of the strategic choice by the state of Lithuania, the Lithuanian society, its political forces and the various interest groups". "At the same time, it is the result of our state’s growth and strengthening as well as its democratic, economic and social changes", Minister Valionis added. However, as the foreign minister noted, "Lithuania’s positions are to be further enhanced in order to implement the achieved results of negotiations concerning each and every quota, each euro of the structural aid, the future of the Ignalina nuclear power plant, issues of the Schengen Area and transit". The minister reminded that during the EU accession negotiations Lithuania had also to address two specific and very complicated problems – the closure of the Ignalina NPP and the Kaliningrad transit. "The fact that today we have acceptable answers to both of these questions proves that during the negotiations we managed to cooperate as constructive and mature partners," he said. The one-day conference in Vilnius drew together Lithuanian officials, MPs and diplomats along with representatives of the European Commission, experts of European integration from EU member states and Lithuanian business people. Participants of the forum discussed the outcome of Lithuania’s negotiations on membership in the European Union and its impact on business, they also spoke on Lithuania’s role in the European Union.