A convoy of tractors was poised to descend on Rome on Saturday as farmers’ protests sparked unrest across Europe, but disappeared in their French heartland after government concessions.
Farmers have expressed anger at overly restrictive farming regulations and unfair competition, among other complaints.
The movement broke out in France last month and has spread to Germany, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Greece and the Netherlands in protests that have led to highway blockades and the flooding of cities by convoys of tractors.
About 150 tractors gathered in Orte, about an hour north of Rome, as protesters demanding better wages and better conditions announced their imminent arrival in the Italian capital, an AFP reporter saw.
“Italian agriculture has woken up, it is historic and the people here prove it. For the first time in their history, farmers are united under the same flag, the flag of Italy,” said protester Felice Antonio Monfeli.
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Protesters demanded a hearing with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government, with protester Domenico Chiergi waiting for “answers”.
“The situation is critical, we cannot be slaves to our own companies,” he said.
About 2,000 Greek farmers demonstrated on Saturday in the country’s second-largest city, Thessaloniki, demanding increased aid, a day after Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced further support measures.
Some farmers from the mountain villages of Thessaly threw away spoiled chestnuts and apples, a result of the natural disasters that hit these areas.
“We don’t have food, we can’t put our lives on sale. We want to stay on our land and not become immigrants,” Costas Tzelas, president of the Karditsa Agricultural Associations, told AFP.
Mitsotakis extended the return of excise duty on oil and the rebate on rural electricity from May to September among a package of measures whose cost Mitsotakis raised to more than one billion euros ($1.1 billion).
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But Tzelas said Mitsotakis’ announcements amounted to “peanuts” and the president of a union of farmers’ associations, Rizos Maroudas, told reporters a meeting was planned next week “to decide on the escalation of the blockades”.
Access to the airport was interrupted
In Germany, hundreds of farmers with tractors blocked access to Frankfurt airport, the country’s busiest, in opposition to diesel tax reform, police said.
A Hessian farmers’ association put the number of vehicles at around 1,000, while police said 400 tractors were involved before the protest ended in the early afternoon.
A protest at the Dutch-Belgian border that had blocked a major highway ended Saturday, with traffic expected to resume around 7:00 p.m., according to the Belga news agency.
Farmers’ discontent has also affected non-EU Switzerland, where around 30 tractors marched in Geneva on Saturday in the country’s first such protest since the movement began elsewhere in Europe.
“As a young person, it scares us a lot not knowing if there is a future in our profession,” Antonin Ramu, a 19-year-old apprentice viticulturist, told AFP.
Defiant French farmers stay at the barricades
He welcomed the move to more environmentally friendly agriculture, but called for more help in the face of competition from countries without the same standards.
In France, security forces cleared the few remaining highway blockades on Saturday after the main farmers’ union called for them to be lifted following government announcements.
At its height, the movement rocked the government of new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, forcing it to drop a plan to reduce pesticides and insecticides and offer a 400 million euro aid package.
Romanian farmers and transporters also announced the end of their roadblock mobilization on Saturday following an agreement with the government.
The EU is trying to address concerns ahead of this year’s European Parliament elections.
The European Commission on Thursday promised measures to defend the “legitimate interests” of EU farmers, particularly the criticized administrative burdens of the bloc’s Common Agricultural Policy.
Source: AFP