Nearly 25,000 Estonians expressed support to farmers

TALLINN - 24,859 Estonian people signed the petition of farmers that demands equal competitive conditions for Estonia, Latvian and Lithuanian agricultural producers with the rest of Europe, Public Broadcasting reports.

22,981 gave their real signature, 24 digital signature, 826 supported the statement at the web pages petitsioon.com and petitsioon.ee and 1,028 people via Facebook.

In Latvia, 18,710 support signatures and in Lithuania nearly 20,000 signatures were collected.

On Thursday, representatives of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian farmers’ organizations will meet in Brussels with European Parliament President Martin Schulz and will hand him over the petition and the over 63,500 support signatures. The signatures will be also delivered to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Currently the EU agricultural subsidies for the Baltic states are the lowest in the EU – the average EU direct subsidies level is 269 euros per hectare while in Estonia it is 117, Latvia 97 and Lithuania 144 euros. According to the current proposals of the EU, direct subsidies will increase by 2020 to just 159 euro in Estonia, 145 in Latvia and 177 in Lithuania.