Greek police fire tear gas at protesting farmers threatening to blockade airport

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Riot police fired tear gas Friday at farmers attempting to block the main access road to the international airport in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, as protests escalated over delays in the payment of European Union-backed agricultural subsidies.

Irate farmers have deployed thousands of tractors and other agricultural vehicles at border crossings and key points along highways across the country, periodically stopping traffic and threatening to completely blockade the roads, as well as airports and ports.

Police are enforcing traffic diversions in several parts of northern and central Greece to skirt the blockades, while farmer roadblocks at the country’s northern borders with Bulgaria, Turkey and North Macedonia have already hampered truck traffic, causing a traffic backup of freight vehicles.

The payment delays have come as authorities review all requests following revelations of widespread fraudulent claims for EU farm subsidies. Protesters have argued the delays amount to collective punishment, leaving honest farmers in debt and unable to plant their fields for next season. Greece’s farming sector has also been hit this year by an outbreak of goat and sheep pox that led to a mass cull of livestock.

“We’re out in the street (protesting) whereas we should be sowing. We’re bankrupt,” farmer Vasilis Mavroskas said.

The inability to plant crops will have a knock-on effect on food supplies to cities, he said. “It’s a matter of survival at this point. If I stop producing, think of what will happen at the table of urban centers. We’re appealing for society to join us.”

About 200-300 farmers with more than 100 tractors blocked one of the roads near the airport in the northern city of Thessaloniki. A small group used tractors in an attempt to break through a police cordon and block the airport’s main access road, which would have prevented travelers entering or leaving the facility.

Michalis Chrisochoidis, the minister for public order, said this week that the government remained open to talks with protest leaders, but warned that it wouldn’t tolerate the shutdown of major transit points.

Christos Tsilias, vice president of the Thessaloniki farmers’ union, called on the public to support the farmers’ demands and pressure the government to release the payments.

“At this moment the plains of Thessaloniki (and the nearby areas of) Halkidiki are not planted,” he said. “We don’t have money to buy raw materials” such as seeds and fertilizer.

Protests by farmers are common in Greece, and similar blockades in the past have sometimes severed all road traffic between the north and south of the country for weeks.

The subsidy scandal prompted the resignation of five senior government officials in June, and the phased shutdown of a state agency that handled agricultural subsidies. Dozens of people have been arrested for allegedly filing false claims, in response to an investigation led by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The independent EU body dealing with financial crime said at the end of October that the investigation was linked to “a systematic large-scale subsidy fraud scheme and money-laundering activities.”