CAP is in solidarity with the thousands of farmers who this morning began protest actions across the country, and confirms that it has reached an agreement with the Government, worth 62 million, to pay all the aid – without cuts -; everything else is “repetitions” of measures already announced.
A spontaneous movement of farmers has been taking place since the early hours of today, February 1st, across the country, galvanizing the feeling of indignation in the sector.
“CAP is fully supportive of the farmers’ protest. It is a spontaneously born protest, it was not a protest created by any party, by any organization. And it reflects the depth of farmers’ discontent”, declared the president of the Portuguese Farmers Confederation.
Álvaro Mendonça e Moura considers that the Government’s announcement, last week, of cuts of 25 and 35% in payments owed to farmers was “the straw that broke the camel’s back”. If, on the one hand, it lit the fuse of protest by this civic movement, on the other, it led CAP, as a representative organization of the sector and social partner, to demand from the Government the reversal of the decision, which was achieved through negotiation and announced by the Ministry of Agriculture, in a statement yesterday morning and, loudly justified by the Minister of Agriculture at the afternoon press conference, simply as “a less happy communication” from IFAP which “spoke ahead of time about a cut of 35 and 25 percent”, said Maria do Céu Antunes.
The president of the Confederation reiterated that it is not acceptable “for ministers to go public, after the agreement reached with CAP, to present numbers that are essentially a mere repetition of announcements made. “It’s not worth repeating, this only makes people more suspicious when they talk to the Government and, in general, when they talk to politicians”, said the person in charge.