Greek government moves to address farmer protests after Crete clashes

Greece's government is scrambling to keep angry farmers from blocking key infrastructure after airports were occupied on Crete in a growing nationwide protest for agriculture funds.

Thousands of tractors have intermittently blocked highways and border crossings since late November, and the farmers vowed to block the central port of Volos on Wednesday.

"At this moment, there are over 20,000 tractors on the roads of Greece, possibly approaching 25,000," Sokratis Alifteiras, a senior farm unionist for the central Larissa region, told reporters.

"The decision made by the farmers of Thessaly for tomorrow morning is to block the port of Volos," from both land and sea, he said.

The conservative government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis has struggled for months to address a farm subsidy scandal investigated by EU authorities, which has delayed payments to tens of thousands of growers.

The government has promised to allocate additional funds to legitimate farmers, who are under additional pressure this year owing to low prices for their produce, higher energy costs and a disastrous sheep pox epidemic.

"Produce prices are so humiliatingly low, that the cost of production is higher than the money we earn," Vaios Tsiakmakis, a tobacco and cotton grower told journalists at a protest near the central town of Karditsa.

'Survival'

Iordanis Ioannidis, a cotton farmer and spokesman for demonstrators at a tractor protest near Larissa, said the sector had hit "rock bottom" and farmers had little left to lose.

"The government is giving us money which we are owed from 2023... there is no political will to help the primary sector," he added.

Another farmer at the same roadblock, Evripides Katsaros, said the sector's demands were about "survival", noting that his pear crop costs €31,000 ($36,000) to produce annually and only earns him €27,000.

"The government has given us nothing," Katsaros said.

On Monday, farmers on the island of Crete broke through police lines and occupied the main airports of Heraklion and Chania, forcing several flights to be canceled or rescheduled.

Another farm protest on the island of Lesbos also prevented passengers from leaving an outbound ferry.

In May, EU prosecutors alleged that thousands of suspects - many of them not farmers - had for years made claims for land they did not own, and exaggerated livestock numbers.

Legitimate demands

Greek officials say more than €30 million ($35 million) of false claims were made.

The alleged graft is believed to have been ongoing at least since 2018, costing genuine farmers €70 million ($81 million) annually.

"The money never reached the farmers, those who stole should be in prison," said Costas Tsoukalas, another farmer at the Karditsa protest.

The government has vowed that no legitimate farmers will lose money and Mitsotakis insisted his government was open to dialogue with farmers' representatives.

He warned the protests could be detrimental to the farmers' cause.

"Sometimes, the most extreme mobilizations might turn large segments of society against the farmers, who may have legitimate demands," said the Greek leader, whose home island of Crete is strongly implicated in the scandal.

According to officials, the sector stands to receive €3.7 billion in subsidies this year, 600 million euros more than in 2024.

Approximately 80 percent of total subsidies granted from 2017 to 2020 for pastures ended up in Crete.

The scandal has already led to the resignation of one minister.

Farmers are also demanding compensation following the loss of more than 400,000 sheep and goats in a sheep pox outbreak, all of which were slaughtered to stop the spread of the disease.