President K. Navickas welcomes the candidacy for agriculture ministers, advantage – accumulated experience

After the meeting, the President stressed that he welcomed this candidate, his undoubted advantage being his experience as Minister of the Environment. The president pointed out that the candidate has interesting and innovative ideas that would make it possible to change and transform agriculture, “said the president’s spokesman, Antanas Bubnelis, at the press conference following G. Nausėda’s meeting with K. Navickas.

According to him, the priorities of the president and K. Navickas in agriculture coincided.

According to A.Bubnelis, the meeting focused on small and medium-sized, family and ecological farms, as well as increasing the vitality of rural areas. In addition, the competitiveness of agriculture and its transformation into an environment-friendly sector with greater added value were discussed.

According to him, his future team was also discussed with K. Navickas.

Navick himself said he had “not received any critical comments” about the possible team, but did not name them in detail.

The applicant stated that it wanted to reduce the gap between the environment and agriculture. According to him, the constant shift towards better environmental quality in agriculture is very important.

“This is very important not only for wildlife, but also for us, the consumers, who want to have quality food and a closer social relationship with the people who live in the countryside and produce food for us. (…) I want to reduce the gap between environment and agriculture, especially since the challenges related to COVID-19 and climate change are common and do not belong to a single sector, ”said K. Navickas at the conference of press.

He also said that he would not start a revolution in the strict environmental requirements for European Green Course farmers, but would encourage them to engage in more modern agriculture.

“I am not proposing or proposing a revolution to farmers in this sector, agriculture does not stop, technology does not stop. There are still farmers today who are already farming differently, using modern technology, which is well funded by the European Recovery Fund, and I think that by encouraging those farmers, setting good examples, we can make a breakthrough in the environmental sector. ”Said the candidate. ministers of agriculture.

By encouraging those farmers, setting good examples, we can make further progress through evolution in the environmental sector as well.

K. Navickas is the second candidate proposed by the Conservatives to the agriculture ministers, as the appointment of the current Chancellor of the Agriculture Ministry, Dalia Miniataitė, was rejected by President G. Nausėda on Friday.

The President praised D. Miniataitė for his experience in the agricultural sector, but said that she expected “not only actions in the short term, but throughout the period” as well as a vision for the implementation of the idea of ​​”Green Lithuania” .

In 2016–2018, K. Navickas served as Minister of the Environment in the Government of Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis. At the end of 2018, S. Skvernelis, motivating the need to “reload” the Cabinet of Ministers, dismissed K. Navickas together with the Ministers of Education and Culture – Jurgita Petrauskiene and Liana Ruokyte-Jonsson.

K. Navickas, 50, graduated from Vilnius University with a BA in History and from Mykolas Romeris University with a MA in Public Administration.

For almost a decade, he worked as an expert at the public institution Baltic Environmental Forum, headed the office of the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe in Lithuania, and most recently served as the Deputy Department for Development and Innovation of Vėjo projektai.