After a night of negotiations in Brussels, Grybauskaitė said that the first round of talks was "rather successful and produced guidelines of what the budget should be."
"There were figures of the general budget but the draft was not distributed among specific countries deliberately, as a tactical mistake of distributing too early was in November. In such a case, there are too many speculations and unwillingness to negotiate. Now there is a slightly different tactic but we sort of know what is likely to be taken into consideration and what is not," Grybauskaitė said.
"We hope that there's hope for Lithuania to defend our package even after the general European budget has been slashed considerably. I do not want to speculate with the numbers before we have something," the president told journalists.
In her words, "all countries lose a lot" in case of failure to agree.
"It would indeed be very bad news for markets and our future, for seven years and our financial future. Therefore, I really hope that the tense overnight negotiations are successful for all. (...) The most important thing is to have the agreement in place. Today, tomorrow, anytime," Grybauskaitė added.
After EU member-states failed to agree on the multi-annual budget last November, the negotiations were postponed. Grybauskaitė said Lithuania's main objective was to achieve fairer distribution of EU aid.
In the talks, Lithuania focuses on three positions – structural funds, agriculture, and financing of decommissioning of its Ignalina nuclear power plant.
