The new conditions for direct payments prevent Latvia from striving for the average level of the European Union (EU), Juris Lazdiņš, the chairman of the board of the association “Zemnieku saeima”, said in an interview with the Latvian Television program “Rīta Panorāma” on Monday.
He pointed out that the conditions that come with the planned payments prevent Latvian farmers from striving for the European average. “It is a clear lie that farmers will receive 200 euros per hectare,” said Lazdins.
He mentioned that in this planning period Latvian farmers receive 130-140 euros per hectare, but in the next planning period the amount of direct payments per hectare could decrease by 20-25%. “100-105 euros is the maximum that farmers will receive,” Lazdins said.
The Chairman of the Board of the Farmers’ Saeima explained that currently the implementation of the single area payment and greening requirements does not cause any difficulties for farmers, but in the next planning period these two components will be mandatory for each farmer, and no additional payments will be due.
“Another heavy stone for us is this 20 to 80 ratio – it means that 20% of farmers receive 80% of the payment, and this 20% includes farms with an area of more than 30 hectares, so virtually all productive farms. “What has been put forward by the European Commission would change, we have to divert 200 million euros to other goals – to make payments to small farmers, rural residents who maintain a hectare, two, three or four hectares, even without production,” said Lazdins.
In the 2021-2027 programming period, Latvia will receive 3.347 billion euros in the EU Common Agricultural Policy, including 2.41 billion euros in direct payments, which is 40% more than in the current period. Latvian farmers will receive 82% of the EU average level of direct payments in 2027, compared to the current 75% of the EU average.
“This is still relatively far from the EU average and our Latvian farmers will remain in the last place among the EU countries with the lowest level of direct payments even with this good result of negotiations. Thus, our farmers will be in an unequal competitive environment for the next EU programming period compared to to other EU countries, because the costs of resources, fuel and raw materials are paid the same throughout the EU and their prices do not decrease, “previously acknowledged the Deputy State Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) Rigonda Krieviņa.
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