2024-03-16 17:42:20
The farmers and breeders of Ioannina are proceeding with the formation of a new trade union body, with a view to solving the problems that emerged at the national and European level during the recent mobilizations, with the aim of developing into a national and – why not – broader body of assertion and protection of producers’ interests.
The meeting, during which the results of the pressure exerted in the previous period were evaluated, but also analyzed the major challenges of the next period, resulted in the expression of everyone’s will to have an association, which will coordinate and claim, in view of and the renegotiation of the new CAP, which was one of the greatest achievements of the agricultural movement.
“The problem in the country is that it does not have a strategic plan”, noted the president of the General Agricultural Cooperative of Ioannina “Farmers Union” Haris Liouris, adding that the producers are not participating in the restructuring of the CAP, which directly concerns them, because they are not organized in the degree it should. “From now on, the more organized we are, the closer we will be to decisions,” he emphasized.
The necessity of organization arose from the problems but also from the mobilizations of the previous months. “All of us, when we saw on TV the match of our colleagues in Germany, Spain, France and Poland, we said “well done, they are organized”. The time has come for us to reach such a level of organization”, emphasized the livestock breeder Michalis Tzimas.
What is needed is the widest possible rally, regardless of party and ideological positions, as the farmer Miltos Boukas emphasized, noting that the primary sector is “in intensive care”. “We saw that it is necessary union-wise to somehow unite in order to have a better step and organize so that we can be heard better”, he noted, adding that it is something that will be attempted. “This is the time when this should be done. On all the days of the blocks there was no “party coloring”. We are not talking about parties, we are talking about our survival. There is no place for any flag, to stand up for our jobs and our place is the goal”, he said.