The Constitutional Court (CC) will next Wednesday take up a second request from a group of members of the Seimas to assess whether the ban on furbearers, which will come into force in two years' time, is in line with the provisions of the Constitution.

In September 2023, the Seimas approved a bill to ban fur farms in Lithuania – the keeping, breeding, selling or otherwise transferring of animals solely for the benefit of their fur.

The group of parliamentarians asks for an assessment of whether these amendments to the Law on Animal Welfare, adopted by the Seimas last year, are in line with the articles of the Constitution on the right to take property and to just compensation for it, the right to free economic activity and the right to limit such activity only for the purpose of ensuring the well-being of the nation.

It provides that fur farms that are still in operation will have to be closed by 1 January 2027, until which time there is a transitional period during which entrepreneurs can be compensated.

According to the procedure adopted by the Parliament, owners of fur farms that close down in 2024 will receive €3 per animal, in 2025 this will be €2, and after the exit from the market in 2026 it will be €1.

However, the MPs argue that it is not clear on what basis these compensation amounts are calculated – the fur business is being taken out of the public domain and the state must therefore take into account the true economic value of the fur business when setting compensation.

„The legal regulation on compensation for losses incurred as a result of the cessation of the economic activity of keeping and/or breeding animals for the purpose of fur extraction or sale is not justified in any way, it has been adopted without taking into account the submitted calculations, proposals and conclusions, it ignores the real value of the business, thus violating the principles of protection of legitimate expectations, justice“, – the CC argues the applicants.

According to them, under the current regulation, compensation is only paid to businesses that have fully repaid the soft loans they have received: some of the businesses' loans mature late, so they will not be able to claim the corresponding compensation, and some will not have to repay such loans at all.

The applicants therefore argue that this violates the principle of constitutional equality, as different compensation is provided depending on when the business is closed down, but not all businesses have the same conditions to do so earlier.

The Parliament also envisaged that all fur farming entrepreneurs would be eligible for public funding to manage facilities that cannot be used for other purposes.

Parliamentarians argue that because the business uses specific equipment (for the rearing of furbearers, fur processing and feed), it cannot be used for other economic activities and will become worthless.

The first time a group of parliamentarians appealed to the CC was almost a year ago, in mid-March, when the court rejected the appeal in July.

The CC held that it did not meet the requirements: the authors did not adequately substantiate their claim that the legislative procedure had been violated in the drafting of the amendments to the ban on fur farms.

Among the signatories of the above-mentioned appeal is Viktoras Pranckietis of the Liberal Movement, who last autumn registered a proposal to postpone the ban on fur farms until 2033.

He said that the current compensation for businesses is insufficient.

The Seimas Ethics and Procedures Commission has stated that on 9 September last year, the then Seimas candidate Pranckietis had received a EUR 2,000 donation from the Association of Lithuanian Game Breeders and the head of the company "Vilkijos ūkis" (Vilkija Farm), which is involved in the fur trade, Mr Česlovas Tallat-Kelpša.

Ethics watchdogs found no conflict of interest in the fact that the parliamentarian had received the support to draft a bill in favour of fur farmers.

However, it concluded that Mr Pranckietis may have mixed public and private interests and recommended that he should not take part in further deliberations on these amendments, nor draft any other legislation favourable to the fur farming industry.

There are currently 19 European countries that have banned fur farms. Two other Baltic countries have already done so, as well as Austria, France, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and others.

The ban on fur farms has been adopted in the Seimas in recent years following the active involvement of environmental and social organisations such as "Tušti cages".