Greek farmers angered by delayed subsidy payments have shut down the international airport on Crete and clashed with riot police.
Images from local media showed dozens of farmers standing on the apron at Nikos Kazantzakis International Airport in Heraklion, the largest city on Crete.
The airport was forced to suspend all flights, while fights between protesters and riot police broke out in Chania, the Greek island’s second-largest city, where two people were reportedly injured.
Officers used tear gas to disperse protesting farmers who pelted them with rocks and overturned a police patrol car, according to local media.
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The protests were sparked after delays in the payment of European Union-backed agricultural subsidies, which followed a scandal over fraudulent subsidy claims.
Authorities are reviewing all requests for EU farm subsidies, which protesters argue amount to collective punishment and leave farmers in debt and unable to plant their fields for next season.
Meanwhile, Greece’s farming sector has been hit by an outbreak of goat and sheep pox, leading to a mass cull of livestock.
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Farmers have since deployed thousands of tractors and other agricultural vehicles at border crossings and key points along highways across the country, as well as ports and airports.
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Michalis Chrisochoidis, Greek minister for public order, said last week that the government remained open to talks with protest leaders, but warned it wouldn’t tolerate the shutdown of major transit points.
It comes after riot police fired tear gas at protesting farmers attempting to block the main access road to the international airport outside the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki on Friday.
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Elsewhere, police have been enforcing traffic diversions in several parts of northern and central Greece, while farmer roadblocks at the country’s northern borders with Bulgaria, Turkey and North Macedonia have hampered truck traffic.
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.
