Baltic-Nordic Strategic Planning Meeting

On April 20, Maira Dzelzkalēja-Burmistre and Valters Zelčs participated in the Baltic-Nordic strategic plan meeting, where we unfortunately realized that we have now come the furthest with the development of the strategic plan, because we were the only country that could present specific measures and rates that are planned to be introduced from 2023 in eco-schemes and agri-environmental measures. We have to say “unfortunately” because we understand that in other EU member states this assessment of measures is carried out much more finely and it seems that support in Latvia is distributed from the other end. Namely – instead of identifying shortcomings and weaknesses, then identifying ways to improve them and then creating a measure with a support rate, in Latvia they come up with sectors that need support, come up with a support rate, a measure and a way to identify it in the strategic plan. Therefore, we are very concerned that these measures will not be logically distributed and accessible to everyone. Sweden plans to introduce 2 measures that will cover all farmers in 100%. In contrast, Latvia is the only country in the EU that plans to introduce 8 eco-scheme measures! In Latvia, it looks like 40-50% farmers will not be able to access these eco-scheme payments at all.