“The plans call for funding of decommissioning of Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, certain transport and energy infrastructure projects, such as Rail Baltica, a gas grid interconnection between Lithuania and Poland, an electricity link between Lithuania and Sweden. Certainly, apart from those projects, Lithuania will also have to strive for larger direct payments to farmers during the negotiations, to make efforts to prevent a decline in support from the Cohesion funds,” Algirdas Šemeta, European Commissioner for Taxation and Customs Union, Audit and Anti-Fraud, said in an interview to the daily.
The commissioner noted that low earners in Lithuania had to give a relatively big share of their income for taxes yet there actually were no certain taxes in Lithuania, which could ensure fair redistribution of taxes.
“As far as fraud is concerned, speaking about the embezzlement of EU funds in 2007-2013, the provisional statistical data show that Lithuania’s result comprises just about one-tenth of EU average rate. And the scale of smuggling could be disclosed, for example, by a new study by KPMG, which shows that more than 31 percent of cigarettes consumed in Lithuania in 2010-2011 were either smuggled or counterfeit. The only country with worse figures is Latvia,” Šemeta said.
