Romanian farmers and road hauliers, who were among the first in Europe to shout their “fed up” by blocking roads, began to leave camp on Saturday, following the announcement of an agreement with their government. The demonstrators are “satisfied” to have obtained a place at the negotiating table, one of their representatives, Danut Andrus, told AFP. It was a “condition” to end the movement, he explained, northeast of the capital Bucharest, which farmers and truckers were gradually leaving to return to their regions.
Interministerial commission
For more than three weeks, they had been mobilized for heavy-handed actions and snail operations on the outskirts of major Romanian cities. Soon, the government, farmers and truck drivers will meet to find the best solutions to the problems encountered, according to a government press release. “We will participate in the decisions that will be taken at the national level”, within a newly created interministerial commission next Monday following a final round of negotiations, detailed Danut Andrus, for whom it is “a resounding success “.
The Romanian government had already adopted several of the 76 requests put forward to satisfy professionals in these sectors, including subsidies for diesel, state aid and the possibility in certain cases of deferring loan repayments. In this country of 19 million inhabitants bordering Ukraine and a member of the European Union (EU), truckers and farmers had already expressed their anger last year due to competition from kyiv. This was joined in January by other demands, which resulted in actions across the country, relayed on social networks.
In particular: taxes and insurance considered too expensive, while European subsidies are poorly distributed. For their part, truckers denounce the exemptions granted in Brussels to Ukrainian transport companies transiting through Romania and causing a bottleneck at the borders. The losses of Romanian farmers linked to Ukrainian competition were estimated at nearly three billion euros last year, according to figures put forward by one of their unions, while episodes of drought are also increasing.