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Lithuania, a country of three million people bordering Poland, Latvia, Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, will take over the rotating EU presidency on 1 July. "Our main priorities will mainly reflect the situation in Europe's economy," Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite told this website.

"We inherited a lot of issues. About 80 percent of our agenda will be mainly questions about the European economy, the European level of integration, growth and jobs and the free trade agreement with the US," she added.

A record 563 dossiers are currently in the legislative pipeline and have to be managed by the Lithuanian presidency. The next EU budget for 2014-2020 requires 75 separate bills alone to come into force as planned on 1 January.

With European elections scheduled in May 2014, most legislation has to be adopted during the second half of this year, as the European Parliament will have only three months left to work next year.

"Since the Lisbon Treaty was adopted, no EU presidency has had that many dossiers on their table. We tripled our staff in Brussels, we now have some 200 people there, not only diplomats, also special attaches who are experts on various files, coming from the respective ministries," deputy foreign minister Vytautas Leskevicius said.

In addition to all of this, the 'Lithuanian flavour' of the EU presidency will be Eastern Partnership, the Baltic Sea Strategy and external borders.

Through the Eastern Partnership, the EU is seeking closer relations and ultimately visa-free travel and free trade with Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and, in the more distant future, Lithuania's neighbour Belarus.

Lithuania will host an Eastern Partnership summit in November.

See full text at: http://euobserver.com/lithuania/120299