Spanish farmers blocked the country's main highways this Wednesday (7) with their tractors for a second day and interrupted access to port terminals, as dissatisfaction spreads in the interior of Europe against high costs, bureaucracy and competition. from countries outside the European Union.
“Some countries don't respect the rules, they don't have quality controls,” said Juan, who grows lemons in Andalusia and was at a blockade in front of the access to the port of Malaga.
The current prices of lemons have ruined his business this year. “They don’t want them, not even if I give them,” he told national broadcaster TVE.
Tired of the market situation and encouraged by similar protests in other European countries, Spanish farmers took their tractors off the farms on Tuesday (6), two days before protests scheduled by the country's main farmers' associations.
About a dozen major highways were blocked Tuesday across Spain, traffic authorities said.
In recent weeks, farmers in European countries such as Germany, France and Belgium have held protests that have sometimes turned violent.
Farmers say the demanding rules imposed on them by the EU to protect the environment make them less competitive than their peers in other regions, such as Latin America or the non-EU part of Europe. They also complain about the increasingly obscure bureaucratic measures imposed on them.
The protests led the Spanish government to hand out an extra 269 million euros in subsidy to up to 140,000 farmers and the European Commission to scrap a plan to halve pesticide use in the bloc, which farmers oppose.
Source: CNN Brasil
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