The pact will be fully applicable only after Lithuania adopts the euro, with no clear date yet when this may happen, it wrote.
President Dalia Grybauskaitė told the paper that Lithuania's policies should not change much as a result of the new fiscal pact. "It sets the mandatory limits and principles of fiscal policies for EU member states. The bottom line is that these principles will be depoliticized and binding on all political forces inside the member states," the president said.
"In other words, countries that will exceed, say, the budget deficit limits will not be able to continue overspending, because they will face inevitable sanctions. I believe that in Lithuania and other EU countries, the compact will curb the appetite of certain political forces and interest groups for overspending, particularly in the run-up to elections," she said.
There is no word yet as to what obligations the country will want to undertake, nor a target date for joining the eurozone. Based on the latest official statistics, Lithuania does not meet three Maastricht criteria. Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius says that the country currently fails to comply with one criterion, that of public sector deficit, but will meet it this year.
