All the president’s men

One thing is certain about Lithuania’s six-month presidency of the European Union’s Council of Ministers: there will be a firm hand at the helm. That hand is Dalia Grybauskaite’s; she is the country’s president and its first European commissioner. It will be she, rather than Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius, who will call the shots during the presidency.  

Grybauskaite will not spend much time in Brussels; she will focus on the high politics, a job to be done largely from Vilnius and in tours of Europe. But her influence is likely to be felt in many aspects of the presidency. Already, she has become involved in tailoring the government to match its European responsibilities to a degree probably not seen – at least publicly – in a Council presidency. During the government’s formation after elections last autumn, for example, Grybauskaite took it upon herself to test would-be ministers’ language skills.

She compensates for her own occasional linguistic deficiencies with verve and clarity of intent, and the same energy and purpose are likely to characterise her conduct of the presidency. During Lithuania’s and Grybaus-kaite’s term of office, EU interests, national priorities and personal ambitions may coincide to an unusual degree.

Lithuanians’ knowledge of the EU may be no greater than the typical European’s, says its ambassador to the EU, Raimundas Karoblis, but they are unusually pro-EU. Eurobarometer found in late 2012 that 49% of Lithuanians trust the EU, compared to an EU average of 33%. Lithuanians have gone through real pain – a post-communist transformation principally along neo-liberal lines – in return for the geopolitical security of membership. This is a security that Lithuania wants to reinforce through the flagship project of its presidency – a summit for the EU’s Eastern Partnership in November.

But there are other national concerns – including energy and the environment – that a small country would not be able to address without its neighbours and the EU. There has been less conviction about giving up the litas for the euro, but that hesitancy now appears to have passed. Lithuania expects to give the euro its own, small vote of confidence in 2015-16.

Budget talks

Even more than usual, the EU’s interests hinge on the presidency’s success. The EU’s long-term budget for 2014-20 must be agreed, wrapped up and delivered by the end of the year; and, since Lithuania’s presidency is the last completely within the current term of the European Parliament, the onus falls upon it to tie up many loose strands.

Grybauskaite will need no spur to push through the EU’s agenda, but the thought that she might be a candidate to become either the next president of the European Council or of the European Commission surely injects an extra incentive. Grybauskaite herself is not hinting at such ambitions – and nor would the calendar be easy for her. She is likely to stand for re-election as president next May and – although Grybauskaite is popular – it might rile ordinary voters if she were to abandon the country’s highest post so early in her term (in the summer for the European Commission or winter for the Council), all the more so given the fragility of its politics in the aftermath of the economic crisis and the latest elections.

The sum of these interests might be a presidency with a level of commitment beyond the norm. Whether it can swallow so much responsibility is another matter. But Lithuania’s foreign ministry had a small dry run in 2011, when it occupied the rotating presidency of the Organis-ation for Security and Co-operation in Europe; and, to cope with the presidency of the Council of Ministers, Lithuania has increased its staff in Brussels from 80 to about 190 over the past two years. It has also innovated by bringing its civil servants over from Vilnius to be inducted more deeply into the methods and particularities of the European Commission and European Parliament.

As Karoblis points out, the same time constraints that will place particular responsibilities on the Lithuanian presidency – the need for a long-term budget, the urge to complete legislation – may also oblige the EU’s institutions and member states to focus and develop momentum. Lithuania finds itself with a difficult role to play at the end of that particular drama, but it and the other actors know the play must end soon.