LISBON, Portugal – High energy costs are stoking unrest in parts of Europe, with Spain deploying more than 23,000 police officers amid a truckers´ strike Friday and farmers in France and Greece snarling traffic with their protests.
Russia´s military operation in Ukraine has further pushed up costs for oil and natural gas in Europe, driving record inflation and making it ever more expensive for farmers and truckers to fuel their equipment and vehicles afford fertilizer or keep up with other costs.
In Europe, which is dependent on Russian oil and natural gas, the war worsened an energy supply crunch that has driven up costs for households and businesses for months.
A group of mostly self-employed Spanish truckers walked off the job days ago over high fuel prices and other grievances, and it’s devolved into attacks as most drivers continue working.
Police in patrol cars and helicopters escorted convoys of trucks along highways and held back picketers Friday, seeking to ensure products like dairy and cement keep moving as some sectors reported supply problems on the fifth day of the strike.
Picketers threw burning tires onto a highway overnight in northwestern Spain, national media reported. Police arrested six people and placed 34 others under investigation, the Interior Ministry said. Striking truckers also have been accused of throwing rocks at trucks that are still working this week, tearing cargo tarps, puncturing truck tires and threatening working drivers with violence.
In France, which has seen scattered protests this week against soaring fuel prices, a convoy of about 20 farmers on their tractors in the western Brittany region protested Friday by driving slowly down a highway and blockading a traffic circle, creating tailbacks to draw attention to their plight.
French road haulers and fishing crews have set up temporary barricades in recent days, using their vehicles and burning palettes to block roads.
Meanwhile, hundreds of protesting farmers blocked traffi c in central Athens to demand the government grant them additional concessions to cope with high energy costs. Holding up vegetables and black flags, the protesters, some on tractors, gathered outside the Farm Ministry and planned to head to parliament in the center of the capital.
In Spain, the government repeated its claims that far-right sympathizers are inciting the strike there. Finance Minister María Jesús Montero told reporters that the walkout amounts to “extortion, which the far-right is exploiting to prevent produce and food being distributed.”
The striking truckers deny far-right links. In a statement late Thursday on their website, they said the government “is trying to criminalize and place ideological labels on a sector which only wants to live from its work and which feels excluded and disrespected by the country´s leaders.”
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