"There is no money for farm subsidies," Papandreou told parliament on Friday morning. Hundreds of lorries and trucks remained stranded at the two key border posts at Promahonas-Kulata and Exohi-Ilinden as not even the biting cold forced the farmers to abandon their positions. Farmers continued to erect new road blocks throughout Greece. More than 20 key road, including main highway connecting the capital, Athens, with the northern port city of Thessaloniki were also blocked.
The farmers drove tractors and heavy machinery to the borders with Albania, Turkey and Macedonia to block border traffic there too. Earlier this week, the Bulgarian government appealed to the European Union to take "immediate" action to end the blockades.
Greece's socialist government, which is struggling to cope with an unprecedented economic crisis and pressure from the European Union to curb the highest budget deficit in the 27-nation bloc, promised to provide state aid by mid-March and urged farmers to dismantle the roadblocks.