“These days, farmers are showing what social responsibility means. They are opening the roads for people travelling for the holidays, making citizens’ everyday lives easier,” the statement says.

By contrast, the party accuses the police, under the direction of Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis, of deliberately provoking confrontation. It argues that the authorities are closing roads “under the pretext of safety”, despite the state having long deemed single-lane, poorly maintained or neglected roads to be “completely safe”.

“When farmers demand the obvious, their survival, the Mitsotakis government activates the only plan it has left: social automation,” the New Left continues. They claim that the government is deliberately generating inconvenience for citizens to turn them against the protesters, rather than responding to the anger created by its own policies.

“Rural protests are not a public order problem. They are the result of a policy that dismantles production and abandons the countryside,” the statement concludes. “The more the government chooses policing instead of solutions, the more it will reveal that the real issue of ‘security’ is its own political delegitimisation.”

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