‘Consensus’ offer made to angry farmers
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced a package of measures on Friday to further support farmers, aiming to end escalating agricultural mobilizations and roadblocks.
Addressing Parliament, Mitsotakis referred to an extension of the implementation of the measure of the refund of the special consumption tax on oil for the current year, at a cost of 82 million euros, as well as the Public Power Corporation (PPC) offer of an additional 10% discount on rural electricity, from May to September – “i.e. the months of high consumption.”
“We have a series of interventions that we must make to support farmers who are rightly complaining,” Mitsotakis said, noting at the same time that “the problems facing the primary sector are issues of national importance, which do not lend themselves so much to arguments, but rather to consensus. I choose joint effectiveness over partisan expediency and rapprochement over tension,” he said.
The batch of measures also includes the “settlement of debts to PPC of the Local and General Land Improvement organizations, which currently amount to 87 million euros,” as well as a guarantee of a medium-term reduction in electricity costs of at least 30% compared to current prices for a decade “to farmers participating in cooperative schemes (cooperatives, organizations, producer groups etc) and farmers practicing contract farming.”
Moreover, a new program titled “Photovoltaics in the Field,” worth €30 million, will be launched immediately for individual farmers.
On the issue of compensation, both for farmers and more broadly for the residents of Thessaly affected by the devastating floods last year, Mitsotakis referred to delays due to shortcomings in the files submitted by citizens.
However, ahead of a large farmers’ rally in Thessaloniki on Saturday, farmers said that they are not satisfied with the measures.
Protesting farmers who have lined up their tractors outside the annual agricultural fair in Thessaloniki indicated their intention to escalate their protests.
