Angry slogans, clashes with police and arrests have become the usual scene accompanying protests of dairy producers and livestock breeders in Bulgaria in the summer of 2008.

On August 27 2008, nearly 500 protesting dairy producers made three unsuccessful attempts to storm the Cabinet building in the centre of Sofia, after Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev refused to meet with them.

Shortly before 3pm, when the protest was supposed to be over, five of their representatives were invited into the building, but it turned out that they did not meet Stanishev, nor did the PM go outside to talk to the crowd. Later, the PM explained to journalists that there were people who openly called on the crown do violate  public order and that he would not talk to such people.

“The Cabinet should have the valour to leave,” Bulgarian Association of Milk Producers chairperson Andriyan Tsakonski, who was one of the organisers of the protest, said, as quoted by mediapool.bg. “We are obviously leprous, that is why the PM refused to meet us.”

Just when the permission for the protest was to expire, at about 3pm, Tsakonski called on the protesters to form a human chain. A  cordon of policemen stopped the chain from forming. Still, the farmers did not give up and tried again to storm the building. The rush in was prevented after police arrested several protesters, among whom Tsakonski, mediapool.bg said.

The arrested would receive warnings for delaying the protests, an attempt at storming and an attempt to pitch tents in front of the Cabinet building, the Interior Ministry was quoted as saying.

No attempt at pitching tents was made, but the protesters did consider the idea, mediapool.bg said.

After the arrests, the protesters asked Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov for permission for a termless protest and received such.

The farmers were demanding that their state subsidies be paid. On August 6, the Agriculture and Food Ministry had already promised and signed an agreement with the protesters to pay the subsidies. A day later, the Government agreed to pay farmers 60 million leva from the state budget. The catch was that the money could be paid only after the European Commission approved the move. Otherwise, paying the money could be qualified as state aid and, hence, a breach of European Union common market rules.

According to the ministry, the money for March subsidies had already been paid. However, the protesters claimed that few of them had received the money.

On August 26, Deputy Agriculture Minister Svetla Buchvarova said that the Cabinet was ready to allocated an additional subsidy of 60 million leva, even if the EC did not give its blessing to the subsidy.