Lithuania must push forward with key reforms, such as its stalled tax changes, or risk losing millions of euros in EU funding, European Commission Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis has said.
However, the bloc’s trade commissioner did not disclose the exact amount Lithuania risks losing, saying that this will be one of the main topics during his visit to Vilnius on Thursday and Friday.
“We transferred part of the money to Lithuania because the objectives related to the tax reform were not fully met,” Dombrovskis said in an interview with LRT published on Thursday.
“We can see that Lithuania is moving forward and we will discuss this in detail in our meetings with Lithuania’s prime minister and finance minister,” he said. “We will discuss the state of play of the tax reform and what is still needed to achieve all the objectives.”
“It would be important to make headway not only with the tax reform, but also with the overall implementation of the plan, because the deadlines are quite tight and the money has to be spent by the end of 2026,” the commissioner said, referring to the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility.
“There are many investment projects that need to be carried out. So we advise member states to really focus on them and not to delay unnecessarily,” he added.
The European Commission has already transferred more than half a billion euros to Lithuania this year but withheld 26 million euros due to the country’s failure to “satisfactorily fulfil two milestones related to taxation”.
Finance Minister Gintarė Skaistė has said that Lithuania could lose a much more significant amount of EU funding if the tax reform stalls in the parliament.
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