By Patricia Vicente Rua
LISBON (Reuters) – Portugal’s caretaker government announced on Wednesday an emergency aid package worth 500 million euros ($543 million) for farmers as it tries to avoid the kind of mass protests causing disruption in France and elsewhere across Europe.
As part of the package, Agriculture Minister Maria do Ceu Antunes announced a 55% reduction in the tax on agricultural diesel fuel and an extra 120 million euros to support organic agriculture and mixed farming.
Some 200 million euros were to mitigate the impact of a long-running drought impact on farmers’ income.
The measures, announced after a meeting with representatives of the country’s biggest agriculture confederation CAP, meet some of its demands.
CAP, which represents 280,000 farmers and had earlier complained the government was reducing aid to organic and mixed farming, said on Wednesday that “to safeguard national stability, CAP will not carry out any protest action in Portugal until a new government is in place” after a March 10 election.
“We are well aware of the difficulties of the last four years,” said do Ceu Antunes. “This package seeks to meet farmers’ expectations.”
However, a number of smaller associations, feeling misrepresented, announced plans for a protest at dawn.
“On Feb. 1, starting at 6 a.m., farmers will take to Portuguese roads with their farm machinery to fight for the human right to adequate food, for fair conditions and the valorisation of the sector,” said one newly-created group, the Civil Movement for Agriculture.
On Tuesday, the National Confederation of Agriculture, which represents small and medium-sized farms, said it would organise a series of protests, slow marches and other events starting on Friday in the northern city of Aveiro.
In France, farmers, who have protested for over two weeks, stepped up pressure on the government by blocking highways with their tractors near Paris and setting bales of hay ablaze to partly block access to Toulouse airport.
(Reporting by Patrícia Vicente Rua; Editing by Andrei Khalip and Barbara Lewis)
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