(Rome) After weeks of mobilization across the peninsula, Italian farmers decided on Friday to strike people’s minds by parading four tractors along the Colosseum, one of the capital’s most famous monuments.
These vehicles – including one green, one white, and one red, like the colors of the Italian flag – are part of a gathering of more than 300 tractors gathered for several days at the gates of Rome, where they were awaiting authorization to access the center .
They are asking in particular to meet the government of Giorgia Meloni to present their demands, which range from the revision of certain European environmental standards, which according to them affect their standard of living, to tax cuts.
“EU policies are putting us in great difficulty,” Elia Fornai, a 26-year-old farmer from Tuscany, explained to AFP this week. “So we have been demonstrating here for several days, because we inevitably have to return home with results.”
Their movement is part of a series of demonstrations organized by their colleagues in recent weeks in Europe.
Like them, Italian breeders and growers oppose certain EU rules and competition deemed unfair with other countries such as Canada and Ukraine. They also demand the elimination of taxes on agricultural fuel and better remuneration.
The main beneficiary of the European recovery plan after the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy recently obtained an increase in aid intended for its agriculture, going from five to eight billion euros (7.25 to 11.5 billion Canadian dollars) .
According to the daily The Corriere della will befirst printing in Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s government also plans to spend 200 million euros ($290 million) to eliminate or lower specific taxes on farmers, particularly those under 40.
Concerning their criticism of the Green Deal which is supposed to help the EU achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, European farmers obtained from Brussels on Tuesday the abandonment of a text aimed at reducing the use of pesticides.
Giorgia Meloni, who welcomed a “victory which is also that of our government”, expressed her solidarity with the farmers, castigating the “ideological” European rules.
In the last budget, however, the government did not extend a regime of income tax exemptions in favor of farmers in force since 2017, but the Minister of the Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti affirmed on Thursday that he was considering extend it.