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A convoy of tractors was poised to arrive in Rome on Saturday as peasant protests caused chaos across Europe, but subsided in the epicenter of France following government concessions.
Among other grievances, farmers have expressed anger over overly restrictive agricultural regulations and unfair competition.
The movement erupted in France last month and has spread to Germany, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Greece and the Netherlands, with highways blocked and convoys of tractors filling cities.
About 150 tractors were seen in Orte, about an hour north of Rome, as protesters demanding better pay and conditions announced they would soon arrive in the Italian capital. We gathered.
Protester Felice Antonio Monferri said: “Italian agriculture has woken up. This is historic and the people here are proof of it. For the first time in history, farmers are doing the same. We are united under the Italian flag.”
The demonstrators are demanding a public hearing with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government, and demonstrator Domenico Chiergi is hoping for “answers”.
“The situation is critical. We cannot be slaves to our own companies,” he said.
About 2,000 Greek farmers protested in Thessaloniki, the country’s second city, demanding more aid on Saturday, a day after Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced further aid measures.
Some farmers in the mountain villages of Thessaly threw away their damaged chestnuts and apples as a result of the natural disasters that hit these areas.
“We have no food and we cannot take our lives lightly. We do not want to become migrants, we want to remain on our land,” Kostas Tselas, head of the Karditsa Rural Association, told AFP. Told.
Mitsotakis extended special excise tax rebates on oil and local electricity discounts from May to September as part of a package of measures estimated to cost more than 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion).
But Tselas said Mitsotakis’ announcement amounted to “peanuts”, and Risos Mardas, president of the Farmers Association, told reporters that a meeting was scheduled for next week “to decide on expanding the lockdown”. Ta.
～Airport access is confusing～
In Germany, police said hundreds of farmers on tractors blocked access to Frankfurt Airport, the country’s busiest, in protest against diesel tax reform.
The Hessian Farmers’ Association estimates the number of vehicles at around 1,000, but police said 400 tractors had taken part by the time the protest ended in the early afternoon.
Protests on the Dutch-Belgian border, which had blocked a major highway, subsided on Saturday and traffic is expected to resume around 7pm, Belga news agency said.
Farmers’ discontent has also affected non-EU Switzerland, where about 30 tractors paraded in Geneva on Saturday, the country’s first protest since the movement began in other parts of Europe. Activities were held.
“It’s very scary for us young people not to know whether we have a future in our profession,” Antonin Lam, a 19-year-old apprentice winemaker, told AFP.
He welcomed the move to greener agriculture, but called for more support in the face of competition from countries that do not have the same standards.
In France, security forces lifted the few remaining highway blockades on Saturday after major agricultural unions called for them to be lifted following the government’s announcement.
The campaign reached a climax, shaking the government of new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and forcing it to suspend plans to cut pesticides and insecticides and provide a 400 million euro aid package.
Romanian farmers and transporters also announced on Saturday that they would end their mobilization of roadblocks following an agreement with the government.
The EU is scrambling to address concerns ahead of this year’s European Parliament elections.
The European Commission on Thursday promised measures to protect the “legitimate interests” of EU farmers, particularly the administrative burdens of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, which has been criticized.
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