EUROPEAN REGIONAL OFFICE
WORLD FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS
Statement of solidarity by the European Office of the WFTU for the Farmers’ Mobilizations in Greece and France
The farmers’ struggles will be victorious!
The European Office of the World Federation of Trade Unions expresses its support for the farmers’ mobilizations in Greece and France. The massive farmers’ protests in France, with hundreds of tractors in Paris, as well as the road blockades and dozens of coordinated protests across Greece, demonstrate that farmers are determined to fight for their survival, for the right to live in their own regions from their own labor, and to continue producing quality, affordable food for the people.
Farmers are also resisting the disastrous management of the nodular dermatosis outbreak. Governments have imposed the systematic culling of entire livestock for every recorded case, without consulting those most affected, further jeopardizing the economic survival of many farms. This policy once again exposes a logic that sacrifices farmers’ livelihoods, leaving them without protection, compensation, or real support.
At the heart of the farmers’ problems lies the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy, which for years has served the interests of large agri-food monopolies, leading to the displacement and destruction of small and medium farmers. The CAP squeezes incomes, increases production costs, imposes suffocating restrictions, and turns land and agricultural production into a field of profitability for big capital.
The same direction is served by the recent EU–MERCOSUR agreement, which opens the door to mass imports of agricultural products for the benefit of multinational corporations and industrial monopolies. The EU imposes extremely costly “green” standards on farmers, while at the same time opening its markets to products from countries that are produced using banned pesticides, hormones, and cheap labour.
Particularly alarming is the fact that, at a time when farmers and workers are being crushed by high prices and poverty, enormous funds are being channeled into the EU’s war preparations. Wages are cut, collective agreements are undermined, fixed working time is dismantled, and resources that should support agricultural production, incomes, social policy, and popular needs are instead diverted to armaments and the profits of the war industry, to be used in the imperialist wars of the USA, NATO, and the EU.
The struggles of farmers in Greece and France objectively converge with the struggles of the working class across the EU. Workers and farmers have common interests and a common enemy: the monopolies, the anti-people policies of the EU, and the governments that implement them. The joint struggle of workers and farmers is the only path to put a barrier against the anti-people offensive and to open prospects for gains in favor of the peoples.
The European Office of the WFTU calls on trade unions to express their solidarity with the fighting farmers and to strengthen the common struggle against the anti-people policies of governments and the EU, which are crushing the working class and farmers for the profits of monopoly groups.
The farmers’ struggles will be victorious!
