On Wednesday, Nausėda signed the decree approving the line-up of the new Government. The Cabinet so far will be two ministers short as it is still unclear who will head the Ministries of Environment and Justice.
"There was no clear vision, especially for the first half of 2027. One of the candidates (I will not mention his name) said that he had not yet read about it, but that he would definitely do that. This is not about reading, it is about writing, because it is the minister who should be developing our strategy and priorities for what Lithuania is going to do during the presidency [of the EU]," Nausėda told LRT TV on Wednesday.
Researcher Sigitas Podėnas, current head of the Nature Research Centre (GTC), was nominated for the environment minister, and ex-director of the Prison Service Virginijus Kulikauskas was named to be the future justice minister.
"The other candidate talked a lot about compromising, repeated the word over and over again, and I had the impression that compromise could turn into trade-offs from between one sector and another, and that it would lead to the abandonment of the objectives that are still important on the green agenda - our contribution to [mitigating] climate change," he added.
The new Cabinet of Ministers will take office once the Seimas approves the Government’s programme that is expected to be put up to a vote on 12 December.