Galery

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During the two meetings of representatives of different regional organizations the Greek farmers decided to stay on the roads for indefinite period of time.  In Serres just finished the meeting of 20 organizations united around 9 common requests and they will go home only after the government commits to meet those requests. Few hours earlier finished another meeting of 14 regional organizations which also decided to stay at the blockage.

Their requests are:

not to divide the farmers in two: farmers form whom this is the only profession and others who have also another profession;

payment of the losses and of the guaranteed price for the agricultural products;

protection of the local production against the imported one;

relating of the subsidies to the production and the dropping out of the system for legal and illegal products;

decrease of the value of production by dropping out the VAT for seeds, seedlings, fertilizers, dropping out of the tax on the petroleum, decrease of the interests of the Agricultural bank and subsidizing of the agricultural munitions;

freezing of the agricultural credits for 3 years and rescheduling of the interests;

complete insurance of the agricultural produce against natural disasters;

discharging of the fields from taxes;

decrease of the retirement age to 60 years for men and 55 years for women and the right of inherited pension in case of the decease of one of the husbands.

“Today the farmers’ movement in Greece lives through a historical moment, which will remain inside of us”, said a representative of the Independent farmers’ syndicate of Serres regarding the consensus reached under the cause of 9 common goals. During the meeting it was decided that besides those 9 requests, which the farmers will defend together each blockage could put additional requests which will reflect the specific problems of the respective producers.

The farmers will send their requests to the minister of rural development Katerina Batzeli and ask for a meeting with her whenever they believe would be necessary. For the present moment the protests will continue throughout the national road network. From Sunday morning the frontier post with Bulgaria at Promahonas is closed for cars and buses. In the past days they were traveling freely and only the trucks were having problems. The road Serres – Thessaloniki is currently opened, however the Egnatia highway between Serres and Kavala is closed.