Drawing on the atmosphere from the agricultural blockades, Charitsis said “the government is making diligent efforts to anger us,” noting that farmers’ anger peaked when, instead of receiving subsidies, money was unlawfully deducted from their accounts for ELGA.

Speaking about the OPEKEPE scandal, he accused the government of “audacity”, stating that “the scandal bears the full signature of New Democracy and Kyriakos Mitsotakis himself.” He argued that attempts to spread responsibility through the Investigative Committee “are no longer convincing”.

He referred to the testimony of the Minister of Environment and Energy, Stavros Papastavros, who “stated the obvious” by acknowledging that the case is a financial scandal and a failure of the government to protect the public interest. According to Charitsis, this admission undermines the government’s narrative of long-standing, shared responsibility.

On the transfer of OPEKEPE to AADE, Charitsis described the move as a “cover-up operation” rather than a reform. “It is called damage control,” he said, accusing the government of trying to eliminate the organisation in order to erase the traces of the scandal.

He stressed that the issue is not technical or administrative but profoundly political and social, as it concerns the future of rural communities, the survival of the primary sector and the country’s food security. He warned that government policy is leading to the abandonment of the countryside, reducing farmers to “beggars”, while they struggle with high electricity, fuel and supply costs and sell their products below cost.

Charitsis presented the New Left’s proposals, which include reorganising OPEKEPE with transparency and meritocracy, strengthening farmers against profiteering and illegal “Hellenisation” of products, supporting cooperatives, and immediately meeting the demand for cheap agricultural electricity at 7 cents per kWh, with an emphasis on energy communities and self-production. “Without agricultural production, without farmers and without the Greek countryside, there is no future for the country,” he concluded.

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