After intense consultations with representatives of the farm blockades and internal government discussions, the Prime Minister’s office is entering the week focused on Tuesday’s meetings between Kyriakos Mitsotakis and representatives of farmers and livestock breeders. The government accepted the producers’ request for two separate meetings, one with farmers and another with livestock breeders, beekeepers, and fishermen, in an effort to demonstrate good faith ahead of talks and to remove any argument from union leaders that the government is being inflexible.

On Sunday afternoon, the prime minister convened a closed-door meeting with senior aides and ministers, including Vice President Kostis Hatzidakis, government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis, Minister of Rural Development Kostas Tsiaras, Deputy Minister to the Prime Minister Giorgos Mylonakis, New Democracy party secretary Kostas Skrekas, press office director Giorgos Efthymiou, and prime ministerial adviser Thanasis Nezis, where the handling strategy was finalized. Minister Tsiaras had been in contact with farmers since the morning, and the government ultimately decided to split the meetings and send two separate invitations. The first will involve representatives from the more hardline blockades, including farmers and livestock breeders, while the second will include producers from other protest sites, such as those at Prasina Fanaria, as well as delegations from Crete and other regions.

On Tuesday, Mitsotakis will once again be called upon to manage a political crisis to ease tensions with the farm blockades. There is caution at the Prime Minister’s office, largely due to the lack of coordination among farm union representatives, with government officials attributing the need for two meetings to the producers’ inability to agree among themselves. The prime minister has no intention of putting additional money on the table and is preparing instead to discuss technical, institutional, and structural demands of the agricultural sector, following a similar approach that helped end last year’s protests.

“There is no more money; I will make that clear from the start,” the prime minister has told associates, according to sources. Government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis echoed the same strict fiscal line in recent comments, stressing that while the government seeks compromise, budget limits are non-negotiable. At the same time, the government wants the blockades to end, as the political cost for the ruling party is mounting. Mitsotakis believes that conditions in the regional prefectures can stabilize in the coming period, arguing that this year marked a difficult transition to a new agricultural subsidy system after the payments agency OPEKEPE was placed under the tax authority AADE. He maintains that next year, payments will be made on time and with fewer problems, and that a clearer distribution of funds will benefit genuine producers rather than intermediaries. With national elections scheduled for spring 2027, he believes there is still time to rebuild ties with a social group that had traditionally been favorable to his party, although this will require sustained effort.

Speculation about an imminent cabinet reshuffle had intensified in recent days due to the farmer protests, but the prime minister has indicated to close associates that he is not near any such decisions. While he holds firm views about certain ministers and has already assured some that they will remain in their posts, any broader changes are more likely to come sometime in 2026 and are expected to focus mainly on junior ministers. Decisions, he has stressed, will be closely linked to performance in managing resources from the Recovery Fund.

In this context, Mitsotakis is said to highly value the work of Kostis Hatzidakis, who is frequently at the Prime Minister’s office, either alone or with other ministers. The prime minister believes that without Hatzidakis’s intervention in the OPEKEPE case, it would have been unlikely that payments would be made on time or that cooperation with European institutions would have been secured. He also holds a positive view of Minister Kostas Tsiaras, noting that he was tasked with managing what amounted to a slow-burning crisis within a ministry whose administrative mechanisms are widely seen as inadequate.