According to the minister, there's nothing to celebrate yet but one could be happy with the fact that work has been smooth so far.
"We could perhaps only positively mention with delight that that period until now has been really smooth and effective. Let's hope that it continues being so," the minister said in an interview with Ziniu Radijas (News Radio) on Tuesday.
"A lot of work is ahead for us as we have not reached the middle yet. But we have also had a lot of unexpected things, we've also had challenges, everything. But it's more of a duty than a challenge, and we just accept it as a duty and are trying to do this qualitatively. I believe it's good not only in terms of our evaluations, but also in terms of those of our colleagues and the European Commission, and other EU member states as we have really worked rather effectively over that period," Linkevicius said.
In his words, since taking over the rotating EU presidency on July 1, Lithuania has already chaired 244 meetings of the EU Council's working groups, and 303 trialogues, tripartite meetings of representatives of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission, have already taken place. Linkevicius mentioned the agreement on the 2014 budget among successful achievements, and said that the data protection disagreement was one of the unexpected issues that needed quite a lot of effort.
"All of that was taken to the working level, which was what we wanted," the minister said referring to the data protection story.
Lithuania is holding the EU presidency until the end of this year.
