PM welcomes Brussels’ proposals to increase Lithuania’s agriculture support

He added, however, that Lithuania would seek equal direct payment to farmers.

“The European Commission plans to increase direct payment to five countries, including Lithuania. We welcome that news but our goal is for those payments to be made equal with the old ES member states. We don’t have that yet but we’ll seek that. We’ll speak abut it with the European Commission president next week,” Skvernelis told BNS Lithuania on Friday.

The Lithuanian prime minister is also concerned with the plans to cut support for rural areas.

“We are also concerned with the general cut in agriculture support as the investment support is going down. It will be cut for Lithuania as well,” the prime minister said.

Earlier in the day, the EC announced proposals to allocate 5.141 billion euros, at current prices and inflation taken into consideration, to Lithuania’s agriculture sector and rural areas in 2021–2027, up 1.4 percent from 5.071 billion euros in 2014–2020.

Meanwhile, the Commission proposes cutting this support 5.2 percent to 4.558 billion euros for 2018, based at constant prices, the Finance Ministry told BNS Lithuania.

Lithuanian farmers receive significantly lower payments than farmers from Western Countries, and Lithuania wants direct payments to farmers to be made equal.