A subsidy payment fall out in Greece barring thousands of farmers from receiving European Union (EU) benefits has tossed 3-week protests into major ports.
The affected 40,000 livestock keepers and crop growers are taking part in the angry blockading protest, with a minister warning of ‘Grexit.’
By December 17, 2025, highway blockades to the customs points at Evzonoi and Niki near the North Macedonia border were still intact.
Similar escalation was also happening on the Bulgaria border in the ports of Promachonas and Exochi, according to the Greek Reporter.
The protesters blocking the Promachonas highway are sparing all freight carriers other than those ferrying international goods.
In Nevrokopi near Promachonas and Eznoi, farmers were early on the 17th vowing to block traffic at specific roads in the evening.
Appeasing the Cause
On December 16, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis offered an extra €160 million ($187.2 million) to farmers after an intense deliberation at parliament.
The PM promised to set up a committee to settle farmers’ issues within the next four months.
Earlier on, the Minister of Rural Development & Food Kostas Tsiaras had ambitiously proposed to directly subsidize farming diesel as in other EU nations.
Tsiaras had also offered to bring natural disaster relief for farmers in the topographically rugged country to a maximum 100%.
Furthermore, the community of herders and crop producers could see the prices of their electricity utility go down.
While these proposals are saving face, they are yet to tackle the heart of the matter: the scandal that froze EU payments.
Over 100 livestock farmers fraudulently received the bloc’s subsidies in the 2017-20 period via the national payment system, OPEKEPE.
In the 2019-2025 period, the amount the OPEKEPE had misappropriated had reached €1.7 million ($1.996 million), according to Protothema.
Matters came to a head in February 2025 when the European Commission slapped 100 suspects with damages totaling €2.9 million ($3.5 million).
The Minister of State Akis Skertsos has therefore warned of an“agricultural Grexit” if a new subsidy system also fails in implementation. This ministerial remark highlights the importance of farmers in Greece, which is the topic of the below data section.
Greece Farmers Statistics
Farmers in Greece make up a large part of the job base and inject much to the economy, especially in olive and livestock sectors. According to the European Commission, 10% of all jobs in Greece are farm-based. This is to say around 400,000 people in Greece have farm employment. Farmers and their workforce operate 700,000 farms countrywide, averaging 7 hectares apiece. Most of the labour force constitutes the 31% of the national population that lives in the rural areas, which is above the European Union (EU) average.
Do Greece’s farmers receive farm subsidies?
Over 70% of national arable land in Greece is challenging due to topography (slopes e.t.c.) or faces natural disasters, which necessitates subsidies. The government in December 2025, for example, announced €160 million ($187.2 million) as farmer support. Another major subsidy provider is the EU, which however denied 40,000 farmers subsidies in 2025 after a payment fraud.
How big is the livestock farming base of Greece?
Slopes, Cretan pastures and fodder crops help make Greece a major livestock-keeping nation. It is principally the leader in sheep-rearing terms in the Mediterranean. Fodder crops constitute a big portion of the sector’s base. Rye, for example, enjoys an export value of €51,000 ($59,843 )in 2019. Livestock totals are another way to evaluate the large size of the sector, per the FAOSTAT-interpreted data below:
| Year | Cattle [Head] | Sheep [Head] | Goats[Head] |
| 2023 | 622,400 | 7,892,300 | 2,747,700 |
| 2022 | 581,600 | 7,378,400 | 2,960,900 |
| 2021 | 614,100 | 7,690,900 | 3,135,100 |
| 2020 | 631,500 | 7,721,800 | 3,149,000 |
| 2019 | 530,000 | 8,427,000 | 3,580,000 |