Farmers protest EU payments regime

Close to five thousand farmers from a number of EU states gathered in Prague on Thursday for a massive protest against a two-track system of EU agricultural payments. Farmers from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Lithuania demonstrated against the fact they receive less than their counterparts from older EU member states. Some German and Austrian farmers also took part in the protest in a show of solidarity for what has been billed as the biggest protest by farmers in the last five years. The protest was called in a bid to push the EU into bringing forward the date for equal payments for farmers ahead of the current target of 2013.