The moment of truth has arrived for the meeting with the so-called “hardline agricultural union leaders” today at 1 PM. After seven weeks of farmer mobilizations, Kyriakos Mitsotakis will receive at the Maximos Mansion the delegation of farmers and livestock breeders who had refused to come to Athens to meet him last week, now accepting the three conditions set by the Prime Minister. First, that all roads will be and remain open; second, that no persons under investigation for irregular or illegal subsidies or grants – such as Kostas Anestidis – will participate in the meeting, nor persons who have violated the law and are under judicial investigation. The third condition is that there should be a reasonable number of people that can make the meeting functional and effective, as officials from Maximos Mansion characteristically emphasize.
“I will welcome them, I will listen to them. However, they know that the framework of interventions the government can make has practically already been announced,” Mr. Mitsotakis emphasized in his Saturday television interview (on Alpha), setting expectations at a specific level. “I’m happy to have a broad discussion, but I have no intention at this moment to give more money than what the budget can bear, than what social justice demands – because we must not forget that farmers are just one social group – and than what Europe allows us, of course. Because we will not put our cooperation with the European Union at risk again,” he said in the same interview, setting boundaries for expectations from today’s meeting, which cannot lead to new support measures with fiscal implications.
Mitsotakis: Farmers know that the framework of interventions the government can make has practically already been announced
Moreover, already from mid-December, competent government officials studied the list of 27 demands submitted by representatives of the blockades and responded in detail that 16 have been satisfied and four additional ones are being examined for ways to satisfy them, while the others are beyond fiscal capacity or outside the European framework. Government ministers and the Prime Minister consistently returned to this response, also calling opposition parties to take a specific position. Mr. Mitsotakis emphatically returned to the same issue in his traditional Sunday Facebook post, emphasizing that “farmers know that the framework of interventions the government can make has practically already been announced. And this framework is clearly defined by the fiscal margins, which we have exhausted, social justice, and European rules.” In the same post, he announced a separate meeting with livestock breeders’ representatives very soon “specifically for issues of Greek livestock farming, which was severely tested by foot-and-mouth disease.”
The agenda for today’s meeting was further specified by Deputy Prime Minister Kostis Hatzidakis, saying (on SKAI) that “we can discuss the new CAP for the period 2028-2034, which is at the top of the agricultural agenda in the European Union, the cross-party committee on agriculture that will be discussed on Wednesday in Parliament, and of course specific aspects, administrative issues and regulations,” while he also clarified that “as things have developed, new benefits cannot be made at every meeting.” Pavlos Marinakis noted that “the government and farmers are not opponents but allies” and pointed out that dialogue constitutes “the only way for solutions to fair demands to exist or be initiated.” As the government spokesperson said, the government showed tolerance, but “a specific professional group cannot create problems for the entire rest of society.”
