A lot of horsepower and loud protest: Dozens of farmers drove tractors in front of the Saxon Parliament on Wednesday morning to protest against the delayed payment of EU funds. They expressed their displeasure with a concert of horns and placards. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," said Marc Bernhardt, spokesman for the association "Land schafft Verbindung." They didn't just come for the money from Brussels, he said. "This is just the icing on the cake of professional missteps in recent years."
Parallel to the protest, the parliament's agricultural committee convened in the morning in the state parliament for a special session. Last Friday, the Saxon Ministry of Agriculture had conceded that because of problems with the software adjustment, it does not come as usual in December to a disbursement. Instead, the money - about 241 million euros for about 7000 farms - should be paid out by the end of February at the latest, it said. The ministry claimed that regulations on the European Union's common agricultural policy have been fundamentally changed from 2023 and that there is a lack of IT specialists for the software adjustments.
