In a comment on the EU–Mercosur agreement, the Press Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) states the following:
“The approval of the ‘free trade’ agreement between the EU and the Mercosur countries by the New Democracy government constitutes yet another hostile act against small and struggling farmers, livestock breeders, beekeepers, and fishers—at a time when they are waging a heroic struggle at the roadblocks for their very survival.
“The approval of the ‘free trade’ agreement between the EU and the Mercosur countries by the New Democracy government constitutes yet another hostile act against small and struggling farmers, livestock breeders, beekeepers, and fishers—at a time when they are waging a heroic struggle at the roadblocks for their very survival.
For the sake of industrial and export monopolies, the government is handing rural producers over as prey to unfair competition from products made with dirt-cheap labor and with pesticides, hormones, and other substances banned in the EU.
This is the true face of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP): on the one hand, exorbitant production costs; on the other, ‘open doors’ for the profits of large business groups. The announcements about €45 billion from the Commission—advance subsidy payments for the 2028–2034 period—are the ‘cheese in the trap,’ meant to ‘sweeten the pill’ of the farmer’s plunder. Government claims about ‘strong safeguard clauses’ and protection for PDO products amount to blatant mockery.
This agreement entails the immediate undermining of the satisfaction of social needs for quality, affordable food. The people will pay more for imported products of dubious quality, while domestic productive capacities are sacrificed on the altar of monopolistic competition.
That is why ensuring cheap, high-quality food is inextricably linked to the survival of the farming population, making their struggle a cause of the entire people.
The approval of the agreement does not mean that the confrontation is over. The ‘river’ of struggles by workers, farmers, and the people as a whole has the power not only to mitigate the consequences, but also to break every chain, to cancel anti-people plans, and to overturn everything—asserting the rights of the many against the profits of monopolies and the constraints imposed by the EU.”
This is the true face of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP): on the one hand, exorbitant production costs; on the other, ‘open doors’ for the profits of large business groups. The announcements about €45 billion from the Commission—advance subsidy payments for the 2028–2034 period—are the ‘cheese in the trap,’ meant to ‘sweeten the pill’ of the farmer’s plunder. Government claims about ‘strong safeguard clauses’ and protection for PDO products amount to blatant mockery.
This agreement entails the immediate undermining of the satisfaction of social needs for quality, affordable food. The people will pay more for imported products of dubious quality, while domestic productive capacities are sacrificed on the altar of monopolistic competition.
That is why ensuring cheap, high-quality food is inextricably linked to the survival of the farming population, making their struggle a cause of the entire people.
The approval of the agreement does not mean that the confrontation is over. The ‘river’ of struggles by workers, farmers, and the people as a whole has the power not only to mitigate the consequences, but also to break every chain, to cancel anti-people plans, and to overturn everything—asserting the rights of the many against the profits of monopolies and the constraints imposed by the EU.”
