“We are a buffer state and we will ask for 100 percent compensation for our expenses. We have been protecting the entire border since 2013 and have only around 30 percent of the costs covered. This is a very low percentage,” Jonas Milius, director of the Lithuanian State Food and Veterinary Service, told BNS.
Milius next week will participate in an informal meeting of EU agriculture ministers in Luxembourg together with Lithuanian Agriculture Minister Virginija Baltraitienė.
Some 6.6 million euros has already been spent to combat ASF since 2013 and the EU has covered 1.837 million euros, he said.
An outbreak of ASF was for the first time confirmed in Belarus in the summer of last year. The disease, which is lethal to domestic pigs and wild boars, spread into Lithuania and Poland at the start of this year, into Latvia in June and into Estonia in September.
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