Peasants and farmers intensify their struggle in Europe
Peasants related to livestock, agricultural workers, and beekeepers have continued to block roads in Greece. As we reported a few days ago, the peasants had mobilized to demand economic concessions, but also to protest against corruption following the OPEKEPE scandal, in which it was discovered that the government had allocated large sums of EU funds to wealthy large-scale landowners.
The peasants have not only limited themselves to blocking roads, but have also mobilized and blocked the port of Thessaloniki, as well as occasionally blocking interurban highways, airports, and border crossings.
At the port, the peasants were received with banners and signs in solidarity, and there was also a 4-hour strike called by the Greek Workers’ Union in solidarity with the peasants.
Today, December 16, public officials are also expected to attend a 24-hour national strike called by the Confederation of Public Officials (ADEDY) in protest against the government’s 2026 state budget and in solidarity with the ongoing mobilizations of peasants.
In France the farmers struggle has been intensifying their struggle in defiance of the neglect of the old State.
La Cause du Peuple writes that what started with the lack of compensation for the culling of thousands of cows due to an epidemic spreading within herds, has recently developed into increasingly combative struggle from the farmers.
They write: “When a herd is slaughtered, compensation does not allow for the herd to be rebuilt, leaving farms unusable or unable to produce enough income to survive. In addition, the loss of revenue is not compensated at all, which is another nail in the coffin for farmers.”
Confédération Paysanne lauched the mobilization, soon joined by Coordination Rurale, and a few activists from Jeunes Agriculteurs, a branch of the FNSEA.
According to La Cause du Peuple, “the latter have taken a more combative turn in recent weeks, with numerous blockades of highways and toll booths […] as well as clashes around a farm in Ardèche. Some agricultural high schools have even been blocked by young people.”. The Farmers have been targeted with tear gas, rubber bullets shots, to which the farmers responded with mortar fire and even incendiary bombs, according to the Minister of the Interior.
La Cause du Peuple writes that “The legitimate violence of farmers in the face of the bureaucratic methods of the monopolies and their state must not be isolated by a “health” discourse, but rather understood as a new explosion of the contradiction between the popular masses and the old, decaying bourgeois state.”
