A convoy of tractors was poised to descend on Rome on Saturday as farmers protests caused disruptions across Europe but petered out in their French epicentre following government concessions.
Farmers have expressed anger at what they say as excessively restrictive regulations on agriculture and unfair competition, among other grievances.
The movement erupted in France last month and has spread to Germany, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Greece, and the Netherlands in protests that have seen motorways blocked and cities swamped by tractor convoys.
Around 150 tractors massed in Orte, around one hour north of Rome, as protesters demanding better pay and conditions announced their imminent arrival in the Italian capital, an AFP reporter saw.
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But Tzelas said Mitsotakis’s announcements amounted to “peanuts”, and the president of a union of agricultural associations, Rizos Maroudas, told reporters a meeting was scheduled next week “to decide the escalation of blockades”.
“Italian agriculture has woken up, it’s historic and the people here are proving it. For the first time in their history, farmers are united under the same flag, that of Italy,” said protester Felice Antonio Monfeli.
The demonstrators have demanded a hearing with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government, with protester Domenico Chiergi expecting “answers”.
“The situation is critical, we cannot be slaves in our own companies,” he said.
Around 2,000 Greek farmers protested in the country’s second-largest city of Thessaloniki on Saturday to demand aid increases, a day after Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced further support measures.
Some farmers from the mountain villages of Thessaly threw spoiled chestnuts and apples, a result of the natural disasters that hit these areas.
“We have no food, we cannot put our lives in discount. We want to stay on our land and not become migrants,” Kostas Tzelas, president of the Rural Associations of Karditsa, told AFP.
A convoy of tractors was poised to descend on Rome on Saturday as farmer protests caused disruptions across Europe but petered out in their French epicentre following government concessions.
Farmers have expressed anger at what they say are excessively restrictive regulations on agriculture and unfair competition, among other grievances.
The movement erupted in France last month and has spread to Germany, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Greece and the Netherlands in protests that have seen motorways blocked and cities swamped by tractor convoys.
Mitsotakis extended the refund of a special consumption tax on oil and a discount on rural electricity from May to September among a package of measures whose cost Mitsotakis put at more than one billion euros ($1.1 billion).