I. Hofmann: payments to fur farmers a "mockery of the people"

After the Constitutional Court (CC) declared on Wednesday that the insurance of furbearers business in Lithuania, which will be introduced from 2027, is in line with the Constitution, but without assessing the level of compensation, the Minister of Agriculture Ignas Hofmanas says that the business should be compensated more generously.  

„What compensation has been calculated is certainly inadequate. It makes a mockery of people who were doing business in a perfectly legal way," Mr Hofman told reporters at the Government on Wednesday.

He said the higher compensation could be decided by the Seimas, as the CC had announced. 

„If politicians take such a decision (to ban business – BNS) at the public's insistence, it is possible to take it. However, these people are nobodies for whom the ban comes into force. If we accept it, we have to compensate the people (...) in a way that is civilized in the European Union countries," the minister said.

CT President Gintaras Goda said on Wednesday that the court did not assess the compensation procedure because it is the responsibility of the Seimas: „The selection of compensation amounts and the appropriateness of specific types of compensation is a matter of social, political and economic expediency, which is within the competence of the legislator.    

I. Hofmanas told BNS in an interview in December that he believes that such a ban makes no sense if there is a demand for fur coats – this business will continue to exist, it will just move to other countries. 

At the moment, 48 fur farms are asking the court to order the state to pay 113 million euros in damages – in January, it filed a complaint with the Regional Administrative Court. 

According to the amendments to the law adopted by the Parliament, the business ban will come into force in 2027, and in 2024 – 2026 – during a transitional period – entrepreneurs can close their farms and receive compensation: in the first year, the payment is €3 per animal, in the second year €2, and in the last year €1. Entrepreneurs have complained in the past that the payments are too low and do not cover their losses.

Viktas Pranckietis, a Member of the European Parliament, has previously said that more than €200 million in compensation should be paid to entrepreneurs. At the time, the government proposed only €1 million for this purpose.