Athens, Greece (AP) — Angry farmers are protesting delay in the payment of subsidies swarmed the aircraft parking area of the international airport in the south The Greek island of Crete on Monday managed to evade riot police who used tear gas and stun grenades to keep them back.
Images from local media showed dozens of farmers standing on a stretch of tarmac at Nikos Kazantzakis International Airport in Heraklion, the capital of Crete, forcing the airport to suspend all flights.
Clashes also occurred near the airport of Crete’s second-largest city, Chania, with riot police using tear gas to disperse protesting farmers who pelted them with stones and overturned a police patrol car, local media reported. Two people were reportedly injured in Chania.
Clashes in Crete are the latest escalation in farmers’ protests due to delays in the payment of agricultural subsidies supported by the European Union in the wake of a scandal that revealed fraudulent subsidy applications.
Farmers deployed thousands of tractors and other farm vehicles at border crossings and key points along highways across the country, regularly halting traffic and threatening to completely block roads, ports and airports.
Riot police on Friday fired tear gas at protesting farmers who tried to block the main access road to the international airport outside the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki.
Police in several parts of northern and central Greece are forcing traffic diversions to avoid blockades, while roadblocks for farmers on the country’s northern borders with Bulgaria, Turkey and North Macedonia have already hampered truck traffic and caused long truck backup lines.
The delay in payments comes as the authorities review all applications following the discovery of widespread fraudulent applications for EU agricultural subsidies. Protesters argued that the delay amounted to collective punishment, leaving honest farmers in debt and unable to plant their fields for the next season. The Greek agricultural sector was also hit this year by outbreaks of goat and sheep pox, which led to mass culling of livestock.
Michalis Chrisochoidis, the public order minister, said last week that the government remained open to talks with protest leaders, but warned that it would not tolerate the closure of major transit points.
Protests farmers are common in Greeceand similar blockades in the past have sometimes cut off all road traffic between the country’s north and south for weeks.
The subsidy scandal caused the resignation of five senior government officials in June and the gradual shutdown of the state agency that dealt with agricultural subsidies. Dozens of people have been arrested for allegedly making false claims in response to an investigation by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The EU’s independent financial crime watchdog said at the end of October that the investigation was related to a “systematic, large-scale scheme of subsidy fraud and money laundering”.
