The situation in Bulgaria's agriculture sector over the past month could be fairly described as a deadlock. Farmers keep on protesting and authorities keep on promising. Then the farmers decide to protest until the promises are fulfilled and on it goes.

On August 13, hundreds of dairy producers, supported by various branch organisations in the agricultural field, held yet another protest in Sofia, demanding that they receive their subsidies and tax breaks, given that the Government stopped paying the former in February this year.

They travelled to Sofia with the purpose of meeting Agriculture and Food Minister Valeri Tsvetanov. The reason was the August 6 agreement, signed between Tsvetanov and farmers, that served as the basis of the Government's August 7 decision to pay farmers 60 million leva from the state budget.

The catch was that the money could be paid only after the European Commission approves the move. Otherwise, paying the money can be qualified as state aid and hence a breach of European Union common market rules.

Adding to the colourful spirit of the situation Tsvetanov, became the media's darling by inviting farmers to accompany himself and Deputy Prime Minister for EU Funds Meglena Plougchieva on their forthcoming visit to Brussels in September, when the two will try to convince the EC to allow additional subsidies for farmers.

Not wishing to wait for the EC bureaucratic machine to gather pace, farmers headed to Tsvetanov's office. On this occasion, they even demanded his resignation.

As happens so often in such cases, the protests caused a chain reaction, prompting police intervention. Entrances to Sofia were blocked amid farmers' threats that they would enter the city with their livestock. Given the circumstances, Tsvetnov could not escape the meeting with the farmers.

In the end farmers received yet another promise that payments they demanded would be made. According to Tsvetanov, farmers would first receive 0.6 leva per litre quality milk and another 0.14 leva later for the milk produced in March this year. The total amount of the subsidy of 0.19 leva will nearly reach the 0.20 leva per litre quality milk the farmers demand. Tsvetanov promised to abolish VAT on subsidies for 2007. He also promised legislative changes that would allow farmers to use state land as pastures.

Unfortunately for farmers, Tsvetanov did not specify exactly when the subsidies for April, May, June and July would be paid.

Andriyan Tsakonski, Association of Milk Producers' chairperson, said that, on account of the Government's equivocation, protesters would remain in front of the ministry until their demands were met. They were even ready for a hand-to-hand fight if no measures to resolve their problems were taken, he said.

This extreme stand came after weeks of protests and calls sent by farmers to those in power. The first protests started at the end of July. Some of their rallies resulted in clashes with police and arrests. The strike committee of sheep breeders from the eastern Rhodope Mountains threatened that it would transfer flocks of sheep into Greece. Boiko Sinapov, head of the strike committee, said that by August 10, 12 flocks with a total of 2100 sheep were near the Greek border and their numbers were still growing. A flock of 120 sheep was already on the other side of the border, just to prove that it was possible, he said. "They'd do better to die from brucellosis in Greece than of starvation in Bulgaria," he said, when asked whether the owners were not afraid of diseases in Greece. Moreover, the information on brucellosis in Greece was nonsense, he said.

According to the farmers, the fine Bulgaria risks incurring if it pays the subsidies is far lower that figures cited by the Cabinet and media. On the other hand, farmers were only demanding what was rightfully theirs, they told journalists on August 11. "They always excuse [themselves] with Brussels," Tsakonski said. "How is it possible that the money appears when we start protesting?" he asked. The money for the March subsidies was "hidden in someone's pocket", he said, hinting at malfeasances.

The farmers sought and found backing abroad. Sinapov claimed that Greek sheep breeders would support them and once the flocks crossed the border, they would become Greek flocks. At the August 13 protest, Costel Caras, head of the labour union of cattle-breeders in Romania, promised that if the EC did not allow Bulgaria's Cabinet to pay the subsidies, Bulgarian and Romanian livestock breeders would block the two countries' borders.