January 20, 2010

Greek farmers extend roadblocks
 

Greek farmers on Tuesday (Jan 19) extended a highway and border blockade in a bid for state funds which has cornered the country's cash-strapped government and fuelled anger in neighbouring Bulgaria.

Demanding hundreds of thousands of euros in state support to counterbalance low produce prices, farmers began setting up roadblocks in the Thessaly region in the Greece's centre and in East Macedonia in the north during the weekend.

Over 500 tractors have gathered near the central city of Larissa, a strategic center on the sole highway linking Athens to the north of the country.

The farmers have also set up roadblocks in another half-dozen key highway junctions in northern and western Greece, and maintained a stranglehold over the main border crossing into Bulgaria at Promahonas for the second day.

More roadblocks could spring up in the southern Peloponnese peninsula later in the day, news reports said.

Bulgaria has threatened to appeal to the European Commission unless the Promahonas border crossing is reopened by Wednesday.

"We will appeal to the European Commission to intervene immediately," Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has warned. "Unless the frontier posts are reopened by Wednesday we will demand compensation," Borisov added.

The farmers are seeking financial assistance because of a drop in prices for products including wheat, cotton and milk.

They are also asking for price cuts on fertilisers, pharmaceutical products and seeds, a rebate on the price of electricity and petrol, and a three-year freeze on their debts to the Greek Agricultural Bank.

The recently elected government, which is already labouring to fix the country's ailing national finances under pressure from Brussels, said it gave financial aid to farmers last month and could afford no more.

Katerina Batzeli, minister of rural development and food, has invited the farmer unions to roundtable talks on January 25 and 26.