Polish farmers have blocked a major highway into Germany in the latest such protest against European Union regulations and taxes.
Farmers across Europe have been protesting for weeks over what they said are excessively restrictive environmental rules, competition from cheap imports from outside the EU and low incomes.
Farmers from Poland today blocked the A2 motorway near Słubice, in the east on the border with Germany.
“The blockade began at 1pm (12pm Irish time). Both sides of the A2 motorway have been stopped,” Ewa Murmyło, a spokeswoman for local police, told AFP.
Initially the farmers had been planning a 25-day blockade but reduced it following talks with local representatives, businesses and transporters.
They have decided “to unblock the road probably tomorrow”, Monday, said Dariusz Wróbel, one of the Polish farmer organisers.
“This will depend on things that we can’t predict,” he told AFP. “We need to start taking ourselves seriously”.
Tomorrow EU agriculture ministers are due to meet in Brussels.
They are to discuss new European Commission proposals aiming to change regulations at the heart of the discontent, for example reducing the number of checks on produce.
Polish farmers say they are targeting the EU’s so-called Green Deal on energy, transportation and taxation, which is an element of the 27-nation’s bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
They say they have been especially hit by increased taxes and other rules.
The farmers have also blocked crossing points at Poland’s border with non-EU member Ukraine border to denounce what they said is unfair competition from their war-torn neighbour’s cheaper produce.
On Friday, Polish officials snubbed a delegation led by Ukraine’s prime minister seeking to resolve tensions caused by weeks-long Polish farmer protests at the shared border.
Polish authorities said they had never agreed to a border meeting over the demonstrations, which Ukraine said threaten its exports and are holding up deliveries of crucial weapons for its war against Russia, now entering its third year.
