The General Court in March annulled the Commission’s decision of 4 May 2007, which provided for an 11-million-litas fine for Lithuania for the surplus stocks accumulated before the accession to the European Union (EU).
Fanny Dabertrand, the Commission’s spokeswoman for agriculture and rural development, told BNS that the fine would be paid back to Lithuania in the near future.
“After the court has annulled the decision, the Commission shall pay back the amount paid by Lithuania. The Commission’s services cooperate so as to make the payment in the near future,” Dabertrand said in a letter sent to BNS.
Rimantas Krasuckis, the director of Agriculture and Food Department at the Ministry of Agriculture, told BNS that the ministry had not informed the public about the court’s judgment since it did not want to boast.
“We are happy about this judgement. It is an important victory but we did not want to boast about the court’s ruling. We are just doing our job,” Krasuckis told BNS.
The General Court said in its ruling that the surplus had not been exported or destroyed using EU budget funds hence the fine did not reflect the actual costs. The Court also noted that the Commission could not demonstrate whether the sale of the surpluses on the internal market imcured any cost to the Community’s budget.
Lithuania was slapped the fines of 2.971 million euros for the surplus of dairy products, of 180,000 euros for surplus fruit stocks, and of 30,000 euros for surplus rice stocks.
In line with the EU accession treaty, the new Member States were not supposed to have such surplus stocks at the time of their accession to the Union. Fines for surplus stocks of meat, dairy products, fruit, rice, and wine were imposed on nine out of ten countries that joined the EU in 2004, including Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta, Latvia, Cyprus, and Lithuania.
