Rome was surrounded by tractors of farmers demonstrating against the European agricultural policy

(Photo: Pixabay)

You can see a row of tractors on almost all the country roads leading to Rome. According to the plans, they will spend the night on the fields, which were made available to them free of charge by the owners. Starting Monday morning, the tractors of farmers who have been protesting for several weeks started heading for Rome from both the north and the south. Those who started from the region around the capital were among the first to arrive. They stopped at the Roman entrance to the road called Nomentana and await the arrival of those coming from further afield. Half of the capital is headed by the most populous group from Tuscany: the arrival of nearly four hundred tractors is expected in the late evening hours. The machines travel on the national roads, and their queues significantly slow down vehicle traffic. Andrea Porro, the leader of the Agrarian Liberation movement, said that according to their plans, more than a thousand tractors could circle the city of Rome by Thursday. For the time being, they are not entering the territory of Rome, as they have not received permission to do so. They asked the authorities to allow them to enter the city center. By the end of the week, a national movement is being organized. They also want to perform on the stage of the Sanremo Song Festival starting on Tuesday.

The farmers’ demonstrations in Italy have been going on since January 19

In Bologna, agricultural workers marched with coffins on Monday, announcing the death of the agricultural sector. Demonstrations with tractors also took place outside the city of Torino in the north and Caserta in the south: in Caserta, farmers distributed vegetables and fruit.

Protests are taking place on the islands of Sardinia and Sicily

In Milan, some tractors have been stationed in front of the provincial capital of Lombardy for days, and these farmers are also accompanied by a cow. Tractors decorated with flags in national colors demonstrate against the restrictions of the European agricultural policy and against synthetic agricultural and food products. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced her negotiations in Japan, stating that her government is ready to listen to farmers. “Since the beginning of our administration, we have paid special attention to the agricultural sector, we have increased the resources allocated to the sector, and we have already allocated 8 billion euros to the sector from the economic recovery package,” stated Meloni. He believed that Brussels’ wrong “ideological” agricultural policy led to the farmers’ protests. He noted that Italy was the first to ban synthetic food products with a law passed in November. The leader of the League party’s European Parliament faction, Marco Campomenosi, said that the farmers’ demonstrations are warning signs of faulty European decisions, which should not be ignored. The mistakes of the current European Commission can be corrected with the European Parliament elections in June, he added. According to the statement of the Italian environmental protection organization Legambiente, the green policy of the European Union “is not an enemy, but a strategic ally of the agricultural world”.

MTI