On Tuesday, Vilnius streets will be lined with heavy machinery of protesting farmers from all over Lithuania. The farmers are preparing for a protest against what they say is poor agricultural policymaking in the country.
The farmers will set up camp in the heart of Vilnius for several days, and plans include a rally of tractors and other heavy machinery in front of the government building on Gediminas Avenue. The protest will officially start on Wedesday and continue until Friday morning.
Raimundas Juknevičius, president of the Lithuanian Farmers’ Union (LŪS) and one of the protest organisers, said the final number of protesters and machinery is not yet known.
“Unexpectedly, the numbers have started to grow and have not stopped yet,” he told LRT.lt.
According to him, the organisers planned for 500 units of agricultural machinery to take part in the protest in Vilnius, but it seems that the final number will be higher. It is also expected that around 5,000 farmers will take part in the protest.
Convoys of tractors, escorted by the police, have been moving along Gediminas Avenue since around 10:00 on Tuesday. They will wait in designated areas for the protest to be staged in front of the government building on Wednesday and Thursday.
“Some tractors are already lined up on Gediminas Avenue. Some tractors are waiting to be escorted, and I know that some are still on their way to Vilnius,” Dainius Arlauskas of the Lithuanian Agriculture Council told BNS on Tuesday.
According to the Police Department’s press release, traffic restrictions are planned in certain parts of Gediminas Avenue on January 23-26. However, the machinery of the protesting farmers will not block the intersections, pedestrian crossings, entrances to courtyards, or bus stops, it added.
This is the second wave of the farmers’ protest, following the first one staged in early January. Then, the farmers across Lithuania protested with bonfires against the government’s agricultural policy, the increased excise duty on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), the obligation to restore ploughed permanent grasslands, the dairy crisis, and other problems.
For his part, Agriculture Minister Kęstutis Navickas told LRT RADIO that he understands the problems faced by farmers and has taken steps to correct the mistakes made regarding the excise duties on LPG and green fuel.
“It is part of the political culture of our government to admit and correct mistakes. This happened very quickly after the meeting, and already yesterday a draft legislation on the return of the previous green diesel regime and the reduction of the excise duty on petroleum gas to 41 euros was registered,” he said.
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