President Dalia Grybauskaitė met with Jospeh Daul, Chairman of the Group of the European People's Party in the European Parliament, and the Group's Vice-Chairs Marian-Jean Marinescu and József Szájer.

New automobile registrations in Latvia fell by 10% in April, the fifth steepest decrease in Europe, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association's latest report. New car registrations in Lithuania reduced by 1.9% to 1,043 new automobiles, the third smallest decrease across Europe, informs LETA.

President Dalia Grybauskaitė met with representatives of the world-famous companies of the United States and attended an inaugural meeting of the American-Lithuanian Business Council. It is the first such association formed exclusively to promote economic cooperation between the two countries.

Businesses indicate a possible increase in the burden of taxation and production costs as the most important issue of the future, while the availability of financing sources is seen as the factor of least concern. Such results were revealed in the Survey of Non-financial Enterprises, conducted by the Bank of Lithuania.

Minister of energy Jaroslav Neverovič met with the EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger. Lithuanian priorities during the Presidency of the European Council were discussed during the meeting. Commissioner G. Oettinger expressed his firm support for these priorities that Lithuania has set for its time of Presidency.

According to the data of the Ministry of Finance Lithuania's general government deficit in 2012 was 2.3 percentage points lower than a year ago and amounted to 3.2% of GDP.

'When talking about the entrepreneurship in regions, regional entrepreneurial disparities have to be taken into account. Therefore, careful examining of local economic capacities and regional factors is very important. A co-ordinated system of policies, covering regulatory environment, education, access to finance and innovation policy, would be needed to sustain and implement such a systemic approach', - said Minister of Economy of Lithuania Birutė Vėsaitė on 3 May in the informal meeting of the EU Industry Ministers in Dublin.

Monday, April 29, Vilnius - President Dalia Grybauskaitė participated in the roundtable discussion on business integrity and its importance for the economy of Lithuania and the region, hosted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Monday, April 22, Vilnius - President Dalia Grybauskaitė met with the newly appointed President of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), Henri Malosse. The meeting focused on cooperation between Lithuania and this Committee during the upcoming Lithuanian presidency of the EU Council as well as key priorities of the presidency, highlighting the issues of ensuring the EU's energy security and the involvement of citizens in energy matters.

Parliament should be fully involved with deliberations concerning the monitoring of member states' economic performance, MEPs said in a debate on 18 April. They hit out at the European Commission for not consulting the Parliament properly when it modified in late 2012 the diagnostic tool it uses. MEPs stressed the analysis of macroeconomic imbalances is important as it feeds into policy decisions affecting people's lives.