"At the moment, Lithuania cannot be described as being very attractive to investors. This is due to inflexible labor regulations and other inflexible laws. There are numerous excessive bureaucratic requirements," Laurs said in an interview to Ziniu Radijas news radio on Monday morning.
In his words, the decision of Coca-Cola, the world's leading producer of non-alcoholic beverages, could have been caused by Lithuania's failure to adopt a more liberal Labor Code.
"It is a strong indicator that something is indeed wrong on our national level, as compared with the European level, as the company ran off to Poland. Without doubt, the Labor Code is one of the aspects. It is hard to say whether it was the impact of the Labor Code or Coca-Cola decided to consolidate its production operations, and we have to admit that Poland is a far bigger country. I see many reasons to concentrate business there, in logistics terms," said Laurs.
In his words, improvement of the legal base is currently the most important task for the Lithuanian government.
