Lithuanian Foreign Minister warns Brussels that reductions in EU support jeopardize economic growth

"The EU budget is first of all a budget of investment. Last week, European leaders discussed economic development initiatives. However, without a strong EU budget it is impossible to promote economic growth and create new jobs," the Foreign Minister said.

On Tuesday, the meeting of the EU General Affairs Council focused on political discussions on the EU's income and spending for the 2014-2020 period. EU's chairmanship in Denmark proposed a “negotiating package” providing an overview of earlier proposals made by member-states.

In the minister's words, adequate financing of cohesion funds, agriculture, and Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) remain central issues for Lithuania during the talks.

"We see the efforts of the Danish chairmanship and the progress in the updated text of the 'negotiating package' on the issues that are key to us; however, we continue to seek fairer distribution of funds in the three main areas," Ažubalis said.

According to a press release, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have submitted joint proposals to the “negotiating package” to keep the member-states that had been the most affected by the crisis from suffering further from restrictions on structural assistance. The ministry said the Baltic nations had called for fair and equal distribution of direct agriculture payments, dismissing the proposal made by the European Commission (EC) for the nearest long-term period as discriminatory.

During the discussions, Ažubalis recalled the EU commitment to provide adequate funding for decommissioning of Lithuania's Ignalina NPP.

"The Ignalina NPP decommissioning project is a sensitive issue in the political sense to Lithuania. Continuing adequate funding for this European project is one of EU commitments in the accession treaty, therefore, it should be secured and reflected in specific provisions in the 'negotiating package'," the minister stressed.

The package should be submitted to the European Council in June. It will stipulate key elements of the talks on the new long-term budget.

Lithuania has repeatedly said it was not happy with the EC proposal to calculate the structural assistance according to the size of the gross domestic product (GDP) of last three years.

Vilnius has also criticized the EC-proposed support to farmers in the 2014-2020 financial perspective. The three Baltic agriculture ministers have agreed to seek equal EU payments for all member-states.