On 26 November in Brussels, the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Neris Germanas took part in European Development Days and discussed how developing countries, which planned or were already implementing political, social, and economic reforms, could benefit from transition experience of the EU member states.
“The path that Lithuania has covered from a beneficiary to a donor country has enabled us to accumulate experience and we are now prepared to share it with partner countries. It is an endless source of ideas, knowledge, and methodology,” N.Germanas said.
Lithuania’s EU Presidency, in cooperation with the European Commission, organized a high-level discussion on the use of transition experience in Post-2015 Development agenda and an expert seminar on the involvement of the private sector in development cooperation.
The Lithuanian Foreign Vice-Minister hailed welcomed the active participation of Lithuanian experts in bilateral and EU programmes aimed at strengthening administrative capacity of various sectors of European Neighbourhood Policy countries. N.Germanas expressed hope that the EU models for sharing transition experience would be created also in other regions in the future.
The high level debate was also attended by the European Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs, Member of the European Parliament, Professor Leonidas Donskis, the Minister of Finance and Economic Development of Ethiopia Sufian Ahmed, the Minister of Gender and Development of Liberia Julia Duncan-Cassell, and Jerzy Pomianowski, the Executive Director of the European Endowment for Democracy.
The European Commissioner A.Piebalgs underlined that it was the first event which had brought together representatives from the European Union and African countries to discuss transition experience.
