EU – Baltic States, Investments, Latvia, Legislation, Lithuania, Markets and Companies

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"Lithuania is heavily dependent on foreign trade. Our exports accounted for 84% of GDP, one out of four individuals worked in the industrial sector in 2013. We are interested in development of industry and its job market which will make added value, therefore, we aim for the EU trade and investment policy to further strengthen the industry in EU," said Krisciunas.

During the discussions, Krisciunas said that the new trade rules should remove barriers that obstruct access to energy resources and energy infrastructure. Facing distortions of prices for energy resources and raw materials in third countries, the EU must seek to guarantee equal conditions in the internal market for EU producers to compete with imports from these countries.

"As regards the EU trade policy in the future, we have to maintain a strong and unified voice of the EU in decisions on restrictive and discriminatory action of trading partners, using all the available instruments. In the active debate on the significance of the transport and logistics sector for the export chain as a whole, we cannot forget that in recent years Lithuania was subject to Russia's various discriminatory measures which are found to have been very harmful to the sector that contributes up to 13% to GDP," said the deputy minister.

Krisciunas noted that Lithuania's bilateral investment treaty with the United States of America where investor-state dispute settlement provisions are enshrined has successfully functioned for 13 years, ensuring the protection of investments.

"The talks on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP) give us an exclusive opportunity to reform and improve on the already existing investor-state dispute settlement mechanism to have more balance between legitimate expectations of investors and the capacity of states to regulate in the public interest," he said.