As farmers escalate their mobilizations, opposition parties are pressuring the government, demanding explanations for what they denounce as the “collapse” of the primary sector. On Monday afternoon, SYRIZA president Sokratis Famellos submitted a parliamentary question to Kyriakos Mitsotakis, denouncing that farmers find themselves at a dead end due to increased costs, lack of liquidity and labor shortages. He also speaks of a strategic deficit in negotiating the new CAP and the European strategy for the primary sector.
“Instead of strengthening and utilizing the country’s competitive advantages and strengthening the countryside through decentralization, huge and unsolved problems are accumulating due to government choices,” Mr. Famellos argues, emphasizing that farmers are taking to the streets because they have no other choice and the government treats them as enemies, displaying dangerous and extreme authoritarianism.
“The blue scandal of OPEKEPE left thousands of producers without their subsidies for the benefit of ‘cronies’. The OPEKEPE scandal was orchestrated with your own regulations and ministerial decisions and took on snowball proportions with your own pressures and political manipulation from Maximos Mansion, as proven by the European prosecutor’s case file and emerges daily in the Parliamentary Investigation Committee,” Sokratis Famellos adds, accusing the government of covering up its ministers and obstructing the investigation of the European prosecutor’s case file.
“The failure to complete subsidy controls burdens your government and the communication attempt to link payment failures with the upcoming transfer of OPEKEPE to AADE convinces no one. It was your responsibility to conduct proper and timely controls and you have failed once again. The government lumps together and punishes honest farmers and livestock breeders who produce, while the responsibility lies with itself, the blue locusts and ND executives [with Ferraris and winning lottery tickets and jackpots]. After seven (7) years of your governance, the agricultural sector is under institutional, economic and social collapse. Government choices left producers unprotected against profiteering, without tools, without rules, without justice,” he states further, asking for answers to the following questions:
1. What measures will you take to prevent the final collapse of the primary sector and related professions, ensuring the livelihood of honest producers and especially those left without income? What will you do about 2024 subsidies, the 2025 advance payment for all farmers, ELGA compensations, full compensation for livestock lost to foot-and-mouth disease, payment of survival income to all affected, compensation for income loss from other animal diseases and the climate crisis? Based on what criteria and timeline and on the basis of which controls will the owed OPEKEPE subsidies be paid?
2. What will the government do about reducing production costs, liquidity in the primary sector and agricultural debts, labor shortages, correcting producer prices and reducing the scissors from field to shelf? How will it ensure European resources that are lost without burdening the state budget? What is the government’s proposal for advancing the Greek countryside and supporting a productive reconstruction plan for the primary sector and with what strategy is it negotiating the new CAP to support young farmers and the productivity of honest farmers?
“Instead of hiding behind ‘Frapedes’ and ‘Hasapedes’, Mr. Mitsotakis should personally explain to Parliament the complete collapse of the agricultural sector and the plundering at the expense of honest producers,” as SYRIZA characteristically states in its announcement.
The Communist Party demands satisfaction of all agricultural sector demands – “Indignation is flaring in the countryside”
For its part, the KKE parliamentary group with a question submitted and signed first by party General Secretary Dimitris Koutsoumbas demands satisfaction of all just demands of agro-livestock farmers to address the economic suffocation of struggling farmers, livestock breeders, beekeepers and fishermen, securing their survival income and taking immediate measures to control foot-and-mouth disease and support livestock breeders.
“Indignation is flaring in the countryside! Justifiably, struggling farmers brought their tractors to the roads, setting up blockades. They are escalating their just struggle, claiming the obvious: the right to produce in order to live in their land, ensuring a decent income. Their struggle is just, which is why it is decisively supported by all the Greek people. Because farmers’ struggle for cheap and quality products is a struggle that concerns the entire suffering people. It is a struggle against unbearable production costs, a cost that starts from the field and reaches household pockets, so that large agro-food groups, industrialists and big merchants can earn enormous amounts. The government, instead of responding to the just demands of farmers, livestock breeders, beekeepers and fishermen, treats them with repression and arrests,” KKE MPs state among other things.
“Fire” from Zoe Konstantopoulou for police “extreme violence” against farmers
Finally, Course of Freedom leader Zoe Konstantopoulou with a parliamentary question submitted to Citizen Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis speaks of “extreme violence” by police against protesting farmers from Thessaly who gathered at the Nikaia junction. She also requests publication of the orders police forces had and “what procedures have been initiated to punish police officers who used violence and injured farmers on Sunday at the Nikaia junction”.
