THE IMPACT OF RDP 2007–2013 MEASURES IMPLEMENTATION ON LITHUANIAN RURAL AREAS

Abstract

After joining EU Lithuania for more than a decade is receiving support for agricultural production modernization, maintaining farmers' income, for upgrading rural areas, for improving quality of life of rural population. Support coming for municipalities from RDP 2007–2013 measures implementation differs very much and it could be supposed that the impact of the support had to be different. The aim of the study was to assess the impact of the implementation of RDP 2007– 2013 program measures for Lithuanian rural regions. For the investigation purposes Lithuanian municipalities were divided into three groups according to received support per 1 ha of agricultural land: the biggest, medium and least. According to the chosen system of indicators describing the rural areas as a whole, it has been studied the impact of support demographic situation, economic, social and natural environments. Average data of two periods: 2004–2008 without the support were compared to the average data of the period of 2009–2015 when the support has already been obtained. The investigation showed that the municipal group that received the highest support, compared with the other two municipal groups demonstrated better results: the net emigration and depopulation trend slowed, a significant increase in capital investment in agriculture, forestry and fisheries is observed, the overall area declared and the area per one application is stated. Differences in number of operating SMEs and the share of employed out of the working-age people were not as great to compare with other two municipality group indicator’s values.