Croatian farmers pause protests to see if the government will meet demands

Croatian farmers are holding off on protests until they know the outcome of next week’s EU farmers’ meeting, and are organising another round of negotiations with the government to see if it will meet their demands, according to the Croatian Chamber of Agriculture’s (HPK) press release on Wednesday.

The decision on this was made on Tuesday evening by the Board of Directors of the HPK, which was not united in organising the protest, according to the press release.

Instead of organising a protest, the HPK leaders said they “stand in solidarity with the demands of the protesters in the European Union and support farmers from other member states”.

They also decided to hold another round of negotiations with the government before any Croatian protests and to send a strong message to the EU that it should also push for urgent changes to the CAP, which they said was “not going well with the production and collapses the competitiveness of villages and food production”.

“The Board of Directors was not united on the issue of starting large-scale protests by farmers in our country. That’s why we defined our key demands at the session, which we will once again send to the Government and the relevant ministry to once again point out to them the problems faced by Croatian farmers,” said the president of HPK, Mladen Jakopović.

“We clearly defined our national problems in agriculture, which are specific and different from those in the EU and urgently need to be solved. If there is no listening and we do not get clear answers from the Government and the relevant ministry, we are ready to start organising large protests soon,” he added.

HPK also announced that a meeting of all EU farmers would be held on 23 February at the level of the European farmers’ organisation Copa Copeca. The meeting will decide whether or not to launch a general protest by farmers across the EU.

“We will wait to see if there is unity within our EU association and if there are protests in all states, and until then, we will see what the government and the relevant ministry think about the difficult situation in Croatian agriculture”, concludes the HPK.

Like those in other member states, Croatian farmers are unhappy about the mass import of wheat from Ukraine and fear the liberalisation of trade with Mercosur.

They are also unhappy with the new CAP, claiming that their farms are being heavily bureaucratised and their subsidies are being cut.

Additionally, they also warned of many problems at home. They drew up a list of ten demands, which they sent to the government and the Agriculture Ministry. If the government fails to meet them, they are ready to show solidarity with their European colleagues and take to the streets.

(Adriano Milovan | Euractiv.hr)