Business, EU – Baltic States, Legislation, Lithuania, Markets and Companies

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Lithuania along with other member-states will seek to convince the European Commission (EC) to make a permanent exemption for small-scale businesses, applying directives to them only in exceptional cases, followed by an impact assessment, he said.

"I believe that the European regulation is largely intended for developed cross-border businesses, while directives put a heavy burden on small-scale companies () We suggest the EC making a permanent exemption for small businesses so that new directives would not be automatically applied to small-scale companies. If the EC thinks that, for example, directive on food safety is necessary then it could be applied to small businessmen too. But we think that prior to that an impact assessment study has to be carried out, which is not done today," Zylius said.

As reported, today economy ministers from other 15 EU member-states are on visit in Vilnius at the invitation of Lithuanian Minister Zylius. The goal of the meeting is to discuss important tools to improve the EU's internal marker, eliminate persistent obstacles to business, promote the growth of economy, service sector and job creation.

The Lithuanian economy minister said that Lithuania has won recognition upon holding such high-level meeting in Vilnius. He noted that a closer cooperation of member-states is essential in order to emerge from the crisis, which is the focus of the today's meeting.

This is the third meeting of the group of the like-minded, the first two meetings took place in London and Stockholm.