The government wants to bring the curtain down on farmer protests, a period that lasted a month and a half, with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis speaking on Monday for more than four hours with farmers and livestock breeders from blockades who had refused to join the dialogue. The message sent by the government and Kyriakos Mitsotakis is that common sense must prevail and the mobilizations that tormented society for so long must end. Otherwise, it is a one-way street for the state to apply the law, with Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressing the expectation that “logic will prevail” and farmers will withdraw from the streets.
Farmers: What was agreed in the marathon meeting with Mitsotakis, the message about mobilizations and the red “lines”
As Mr. Mitsotakis emphasized at the start of the meeting, this should have happened earlier, stressing that an end must be put to a period of great tension that ultimately served neither themselves nor society, which is seeking at this stage to move forward. In the same statement, Mr. Mitsotakis reminded that the government has already moved on many levels and has addressed issues they have raised chronically, such as interventions in agricultural electricity, as well as the possibility of returning the Special Consumption Tax at the pump, which was a permanent demand of theirs, which the government can satisfy and discuss the implementation details. He also referred to price support issues for crops facing significant problems through redistribution of funds that were saved from OPEKEPE’s transition to AADE.
The discussion, as Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ associates point out, ultimately lasted 4.5 hours, while they emphasize that no prime ministerial meeting had such duration in the past and was quite detailed and productive. They point out that based on last week’s announcements, there will be no changes. So, apart from the specific issues of the primary sector and the government’s previous announcements regarding solutions that have already been set in motion, it was agreed to discuss some additional issues related to production costs in general. That is, some issues that were raised regarding the price of agricultural electricity, the way the Special Consumption Tax will be removed at the pump, exactly as announced until today, and issues such as ATAK-KAEK, strengthening specific crops and issues that concern livestock and fisheries as well as beekeeping.
During the meeting and based on the above basic framework that was set, it was agreed, according to the same information, that there should be participation of blockade representatives who met with the prime minister in the individual committees that are created to provide solutions and answers to specific issues, as well as to the rest concerning the future of the primary sector. The government had clarified before the meeting that this cannot lead to new support measures with fiscal impact. “We were absolutely clear from the first moment that any solutions to the structural problems of the primary sector must first and above all respect the country’s fiscal capabilities, be socially fair, but primarily fit within the European regulatory framework, which regarding primary sector support is simultaneously generous but also very strict regarding what it allows and doesn’t allow us to do,” Kyriakos Mitsotakis noted in the discussion he had with Ilias Kanellis in the first cycle of public discussions “And these are Greece – Discussions at the Athens Conservatory.”
Crisis moving toward resolution
The prime minister again left hints about party guidance of some of the so-called “hardline agricultural trade unionists,” however he appeared optimistic that the crisis raging since late November is moving toward resolution. “I believe I am a person of good intentions, but I am not naive either. And I know very well that behind these specific mobilizations were hidden specific party criteria and a logic that I think comes from the past,” he said characteristically. “I believe, however, that ultimately we all want to serve the same purpose. I think transparency and justice are non-negotiable concepts and also think everyone understands that there is no surplus money either in the state budget, and that we will not repeat past mistakes, where on the need to defuse a crisis, governments made decisions that ultimately were not compatible with the European framework and thus we were forced to return the money with interest afterwards.”
