"It's the Cabinet and highest-ranking politicians' decision. But no matter what stage of preparation we are in, all ministers will have to do their job, we won't escape that, including the new economy minister," Karoblis told journalists on Thursday.
He reminded of the fact that a change of government ahead of or during the EU presidency is no news.
"There have been cases when, for example, the entire Danish Cabinet changed one month before the presidency, and the presidency was really great. The Poles held elections during the presidency but at least they left the same (Council – BNS) presidents to finish the job. The case of the Czech Republic was, of course, a total extremity, there had been no such cases, I mean, (...) when the whole Cabinet collapsed, there was a change, and a whole new Cabinet came in," the Lithuanian permanent representative to the EU said.
The Czech Cabinet collapsed during the country's EU presidency in the first half of 2009. Karoblis underlined that the change of government subsequently improved the Czech EU presidency.
"If we talk about the specific case of the Czech presidency, the efficiency of the presidency even improved after the Cabinet collapsed and a new one was formed. But, again, for a very banal reason of understanding responsibilities of the capital and Brussels. The Czechs tried to play the game of the large ones, the French game, that we decide everything in the capital and only execute here, and that model failed in a small country(...). As far as I understand, we are not going to repeat the Czech mistakes," the ambassador said.
Asked whether a new minister should be chosen with a view towards the extremely short span of time left for him/her to prepare, Karoblis said a new minister should be a full EU Council president in his area.
Lithuania will take over the rotating EU presidency on July 1.
Lithuania 's President Dalia Grybauskaitė signed a decree on Wednesday, dismissing Social Democratic Minister of Economy Birutė Vėsaitė.
The decree will take effect on June 3 and Justice Minister Juozas Bernatonis was appointed as acting minister of economy.
Vesaitė came under fire last week, when she and her two advisers flew to a business forum in Kazakhstan on an eight-seat business-class plane chartered by Arvi, a private Lithuanian company. The round-trip flight of the three officials cost 8,100 litas (EUR 2,345), or 2,700 litas per person, while civil aviation specialists say that such a business-class charter flight to and from Astana may cost about 100,000 litas, or about 13,000 litas per passenger.
Arvi is currently holding negotiations with the Ministry of Economy over Marijampolė free economic zone (FEZ) operation contract.
