Declining rural population increases distances to public services, they become more expensive. Therefore, provision of public services is a growing challenge in rural areas not only in Lithuania but also in Europe. Public services are one of the aspects of rural vitality, which is widely debated by both scientists and politicians. Demand aspects are debated, new, innovative ways of provision of public services discussed, new service models combining private, public sectors and community resources are sought. The aim of the study was to identify public services, the demand for which is the greatest in rural areas. To achieve the aim, the questionnaire for elders of Lithuanian rural wards was prepared. The questionnaires were sent to all Lithuanian rural wards – 450 and 352 elders’ answers were received. The results showed that the best served are public services as information accessibility, school-age children education and social services. The public services where a lot of changes must be done are such as primary health care and all types of utilities (water, sewerage, waste), public transport.

In recent decades the continuous decline of the rural population permanently raise concerns about the rural vitality – rural traditions, values and way of life of the rural population, which need to be supported. This is treated as a public good. Rural population is vital factor. Numerous scientific studies are devoted for investigating the ways and incentives how to encourage them to stay. The scientific problem of the study was to identify the factors behind the population variation trends in the same municipality while in some wards it increased and decreased in others. The study experts were executives of rural wards, who ranks the factors in order of importance in determining of the population trends. The results showed that executives consider population decline due to the changed geopolitical situation in Lithuania related to the accession to the EU, while the growth is caused by ward’s proximity to the central municipal city, favorable environment and availability of community gardens, where citizens are moving.

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.