Greek farmers claimed EU subsidies for tens of thousands more farm animals in 2024 than the country’s official records can account for, according to a POLITICO analysis of government data. The finding threatens to expand a wider Greek  farm-subsidy scandal.  

The analysis reveals discrepancies between a shrinking national cattle herd as reported by ELSTAT, Greece’s statistics agency, and the subsidies recorded by the Greek agriculture ministry.  
 
Recent farm scandals have prompted the Athens government to promise overhauls and increase controls over agriculture. “Greek livestock farming is turning a new page,” Agriculture Minister Margaritis Schinas  said at a press conference in June. “It is fulfilling its commitments to the EU and entering a new era in the agriculture sector — one governed by rules, transparency and reliability.” 
 
But the data discrepancies suggest there is further to go before the government has enough information to get a grip on the issue. 

For 2024, data from the agriculture ministry shows that the Greek authorities paid out EU subsidies for about 260,000 lactating cows, according to figures cited by a Greek agricultural news site and confirmed by POLITICO with the agricultural ministry. 

Because a lactating cow generally produces one calf a year, those cows should have added roughly the same number of calves to the national herd. The agriculture ministry data also shows that during 2024 about 70,000 cattle were slaughtered for meat, which also qualifies for subsidies.  

Greece does not publish comprehensive figures for cattle that are culled because of age, declining productivity or disease. But three Greek cattle breeders told POLITICO that such removals amount to roughly 20 percent of the herd each year. Given that there were about 600,000 head of cattle in Greece in 2024, according to ELSTAT, that would be a decrease of about 120,000 animals.  

Taken with the subsidies data, that estimate suggests the national herd should have grown by roughly 70,000 that year. 

Instead, data compiled by ELSTAT through annual surveys show the national herd has been shrinking, from about 640,000 in 2023 to 600,000 in 2024 to 520,000 in 2025, according to the most recent figures published in June. 

The discrepancy could be even larger, said Nikos Dimopoulos, chair of the Kavala Livestock Farmers’ Association. For instance, some of the animals that were slaughtered might have been imported rather than removed from the national herd. In most years, Greece is a net importer of live cattle and exports only small numbers.  

“There’s no oversight and we cannot have an exact figure because there is no accurate data,” Dimopoulos said. Authorities only carry out spot checks or investigate following a complaint.  

Similar discrepancies appear in Greece’s sheep and goat records. ELSTAT reported a population of about 8.8 million animals in 2025, while some 15.7 million were registered in the country’s Integrated Veterinary Information System, a government database.

Two agriculture ministry officials, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the issue, said the ministry is not responsible for maintaining livestock records and relies on data supplied by municipalities. The country lacks a secure and reliable registry on which to base the payment of livestock subsidies, experts say.   

“Unless we carry out a nationwide census of livestock to see what we actually have, we will not have a clear picture,” Dimopoulos said. 

Complaints about the discrepancy between the recorded subsidies and the official size of the national cattle herd have been submitted to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office by the recently formed left-wing Elas party of former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, which conducted its own study of livestock numbers. 

“Complaints have been sent to EPPO,” said Thomas Moschos, who heads the party’s agriculture policy. He added that the Agricultural Association of Kastoria, a small-scale farmers’ organization where he serves as president, along with other associations have already submitted cases to the authority.  

EPPO, which declined to confirm it was examining the matter, is already pursuing dozens of cases involving people who allegedly received EU agricultural funds for pastureland they did not own or lease, or for farming work they did not perform.  

In July the agency announced it had indicted 22 defendants, including four lawmakers from the ruling New Democracy party, as part of its investigation into agricultural fraud. The trials for the lawmakers begin in Athens in October. They all deny any wrongdoing.  

Veterinarians and officials at OPEKEPE — the agency formerly responsible for distributing EU agricultural funds that was shut down due to the farm-subsidy scandal — allegedly played a role in inflating livestock records, according to a document EPPO submitted to the Greek parliament asking it to lift the immunity of several lawmakers. 

One EPPO case involving a New Democracy lawmaker concerns alleged subsidy payments to a breeder for more cows than he actually owned. According to the case file seen by POLITICO, the lawmaker called a senior OPEKEPE official to press for the payment and said a veterinarian had already altered the breeder’s animal numbers in the official veterinary database, increasing the subsidy for which he was eligible. The case will be heard on Oct. 2. 

The scandal has prompted the government to introduce new controls such as an electronic identification system for sheep and goats using stomach capsules, known as boluses. The system is due to be piloted this year on farms with more than 900 animals, covering about 700,000 sheep and goats, before being expanded in subsequent years. 

In March, Greece submitted an action plan to EU authorities setting out measures to prevent agricultural funds from being wrongfully doled out. 

The European Commission said it would work with Greece to help “further improve the management” of European farming subsidies. “Good progress is taking place,” Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen said in a written statement. “But there is still work to be done.” 

President Donald Trump’s Tuesday backpedal from threats to impose 50 percent tariffs on Canada sparked a round of cries of TACO — that “Trump always chickens out.”

But even the administration’s adversaries concede Trump’s latest maximalist menace accomplished something important: unsticking more than a year-and-a-half of stalled trade talks between the two nations and pushing them into serious negotiations.

After months of fitful talks, Canadian and U.S. officials have in the weeks since Trump made his threat made significant headway toward resolving disputes over aluminum, dairy, alcohol and other key trade issues, potentially with some significant concessions from the administration.

That wouldn’t have happened without the president’s July threat to slap new and massive tariffs on items like beer, furs and hockey equipment, Canadian officials, former Democratic administration officials, business representatives and others told POLITICO.

“This was seen as, ‘Well, this is kind of outrageous, so we better pay more attention to it,’” said Canadian Sen. Peter Boehm, chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. “There was always a sense that there have to be talks, but invoking [the tariffs] did provide the leverage to do that, at 50 percent.”

And Véronique Proulx, the president and CEO of the Quebec Chambers of Commerce Federation, said that the threat “put pressure on the Canadian government to come to the table.”

“Very little had been happening over the past year,” Proulx said.

The prospect of punishing new levies, which could have hobbled the Canadian economy, is the latest example of a uniquely Trumpian negotiating ploy that relies on an ultimatum to gain leverage. The president touted the tactic for decades including in his book “Art of the Deal” and he’s used it repeatedly in his second term — and not just on trade.

To push NATO countries to increase their defense spending, he threatened to withdraw from the alliance and upend eight decades of global world order. When Trump wanted Panama to lower fees on U.S. ships passing through its canal, he threatened to retake the waterway. That threat was withdrawn only after the country approved a deal that allowed U.S. firms – instead of Chinese companies — to control ports on opposite ends of the canal.

And when Trump wanted Canada to drop a digital services tax targeting U.S. tech companies in 2025, he threatened to terminate all trade discussions with Canada, a move that scuttled the tax push.

“This is one case where his maximalist demand worked,” said one person close to the White House. “I don’t think this was [a TACO] actually. I think this is going to end up being an example of a successful negotiation.”

The tactic hasn’t always been successful, though. France still has a digital services tax despite Trump’s threat to impose a 100 percent tariff on wine. And threats to bomb Iran to the “Stone Ages” have not forced Tehran to capitulate to his demands.

Still, the latest threat on Canada appears to have produced some movement between the two countries. While it remains to be seen if Trump officially signs off on a deal, the two sides are negotiating. Canadian and American officials met once again on Wednesday to hash out a formal deal before Friday at midnight, the new deadline to reach an agreement.

Among the proposals are lower U.S. tariffs on metals, which risk backlash from protectionist circles in Washington, according to three people close to the process. On the Canada side, concessions on programs to protect their dairy and lumber industries and a commitment to back off streaming taxes — as an expected rollback remains in flux — are under consideration, while negotiators remain in talks over other long-standing irritants including tariff on automobiles.

And three days is a lifetime in trade negotiations.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai said that Trump has “consistently proven skeptics wrong” and “leveraged the power and might of the U.S. economy – the world’s biggest and best consumer market – to secure nearly 20 trade deals with historic market-access concessions from Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the EU.”

Trump’s trade threats are existential for Canada, which sends roughly 72 percent of its exports to the United States.

While the U.S. tariff threat was targeted toward specific industries and only hit about 5 percent of U.S. imports from Canada, Wilbur Ross, Trump’s first-term Commerce secretary, said he believes it will force Canadian concessions.

“The 50 percent would have been a real burden because 50 percent is more than the exporter can absorb. It’s more than the importer can absorb, so it would have been a real penalty for them,” Ross said.

Canadian negotiators made repeated trips to Washington ahead of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreements July renewal deadline. But they have largely been kept on the sidelines so far regarding the USMCA update, as U.S. officials insisted that they would not negotiate unless Canada dropped its retaliation on U.S. liquor and automobiles.

When Ottawa offered what it saw as concessions — like peeling back a digital services law that would have raked in billions from U.S. tech giants — the Trump administration dismissed them as irrelevant to the negotiations. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Canada doesn’t “really get credit for doing something bad and then undoing it.”

“What [the Americans] are telling me — and they’ve been telling me for the last 18 months — is first of all, ‘Canada, get over it. You’re not special. I know you think you are. We are now including tariffs on everyone. There’s no exemptions for anybody,’” said one Canadian business official, also granted anonymity to discuss sensitive dynamics around the trade talks.

Productive talks between the U.S. and Canada could also pave the way to begin trilateral discussions with Mexico on the future of the trade agreement.

“They have struggled for a while to get the same attention as Mexico. A deal this week would in a way present the opportunity to move ahead bilaterally,” said Kate Kalutkiewicz, who served as a top trade adviser during Trump’s first administration.

Even as Trump has regularly reached for tariffs as a way to bully countries, the threat against Canada marked a new frontier. The president relied on Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a Great Depression-era law that had never been used to impose tariffs, to threaten about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods.

A Democrat working as a lobbyist for Canadian interests, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the political dynamics of the trade talks, added that there is “no question” the tariffs “got Canada to the table.”

“Canada was so reluctant to put a deal on the table because they felt that they would be put on the clock to make more concessions above and beyond what they already did.”

That’s why Trump’s threat was needed to push Ottawa to the table, said Kelly Ann Shaw, who served as deputy assistant for international economic affairs during Trump’s first term.

“The two sides appear to have accomplished more in three weeks than in a year of discussion,” she said.

The fact that the threat spurred Canada to the table may encourage the Trump administration to use it again, particularly because these tariffs never went into effect and therefore won’t face legal challenges.

“To me, the 338s, are in some ways, the new IEEPA tariffs,” said one trade lobbyist, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the negotiations, referring to a law Trump used to impose global tariffs, which were struck down by the Supreme Court in February.

Some U.S. businesses are already growing more comfortable with the reality that tariff threats are here to stay — particularly as they’ve watched other countries make concessions that would have been unlikely under previous administrations.

One business official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about private discussions with industry colleagues, said that the administration’s threats are bringing trading partners to the table and opening discussions on longstanding issues.

“Depending on the sector, you’re certainly seeing more understanding of how this is working and how this is being implemented, and you are seeing some of those historic logjam issues being broken,” the official said. “As industry gets more understanding of how this America First trade policy can create those opportunities, I think that there is more acceptance for being able to move forward in this way.”

Oliver Ward, Michael Blanchfield, Zi-Ann Lum and Mickey Djuric contributed to this report.

A deal between the U.S. and Canada to stave off new tariffs on Canadian goods is now on President Donald Trump’s desk, according to three people familiar with the discussions who were granted anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.

Now it’s up to Trump whether the 50 percent duty goes into effect, as scheduled, at midnight.

U.S. and Canadian officials have been in wall-to-wall talks for several days, with the administration pressing Canada to drop retaliatory measures it took against Trump’s tariffs last year — including provincial bans on U.S. liquor and tariffs on U.S. automobiles — and Ottawa looking to lower U.S. duties on autos, among other goods. The potential deal taking shape also includes Canadian concessions on its tariff-rate quota on dairy — an issue that has frequently come up in Trump’s missives against Canadian trade policy, according to two of the three people.

Negotiators hope a small deal on these issues can unlock broader talks between the two countries on a North American trade agreement that is up for review this year. But automobiles remained a major sticking point in negotiations Monday as U.S. and Canadian officials huddled in the afternoon, according to three other people familiar with the status of the talks, granted anonymity to discuss them. While the duties set to go into effect Wednesday only hit a small percentage of trade between the two countries, they could poison the broader negotiation on nearly $1 trillion worth of goods and services trade between the two countries.

“You can think of it as effectively trying to come up with an early harvest, an interim deal, a smaller package of what ultimately will land as part of the USMCA talks,” said Kelly Ann Shaw, who served as deputy assistant for international economic affairs during Trump’s first term.

The political stakes are high on both sides of the border. After repurposing a hockey fighting slogan to describe his approach to the U.S. during last year’s campaign, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is now confronted with U.S. officials who are adamant that Canada will have to drop longstanding trade protections, like loosening its supply management program that protects the dairy and lumber industries.

“There’s going to be a political cost for Carney on any type of concession with some portion of the public,” said an industry figure, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the trade discussions. “I cannot understate how upset the average Canadian is with the United States, and really specifically with Trump.”

If the tariffs go into effect, the Trump administration risks creating more economic pain ahead of midterm elections — particularly in Maine and Michigan, two states that could help determine the control of the Senate.

“At the end of the day, [U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson] Greer cannot bring something to the president that doesn’t address some of the president’s personal core concerns,” Shaw said. “And I think Carney recognizes he’s got to bring something back where he can say, ‘Look, not only are we just at the table, but we actually got something for it.’”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Gabriel Brunet, the spokesman for Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc, said the Canadians were “in a holding pattern at this time.”

Trump sparked the frenzied negotiations last month after he used a Great Depression-era tariff law to impose tariffs on a wide swath of Canadian goods, like hockey equipment and Canadian bacon, if Canada did not remove its tariffs on U.S. automobiles, eliminate provincial bans on U.S. alcohol and make changes to its dairy supply management laws. But his proclamation included a one-month lag before the duties to kick in, to allow more more talks. The tariffs officially take effect at midnight Aug. 19.

At the time, trade experts saw the tariffs as a way for Trump to force Canada to the negotiating table after struggling for months to make progress — to U.S. officials’ growing frustration.

“I think these three issues must be resolved before Canada can get into the room on USMCA with the United States,” said a former USTR official, shortly after Trump unveiled the new tariffs on Canada last month. “And the U.S. side is wanting a situation where Canada is in the room and so they’re trying to help prompt fixes to these three.”

Of the three issues, auto tariffs have emerged as a key sticking point. Canada is looking for reductions in the 25 percent auto tariffs Trump imposed last year on countries around the world and wants the duty to apply only to vehicle content produced outside North America, according to one of the people.

Automobiles could also be key to unlocking progress on U.S. demands. The United States has made clear that getting American wine and spirits back on Canadian shelves is a red line in the negotiations. But that issue is up to the individual provinces maintaining the bans, which will mean winning over premiers like Doug Ford of Ontario — a car-making hub.

Whether Ford caves will “come down to where we land on autos,” one of the people said, calling the automobile piece of the talks a “domino” in the discussions.

Ford exerted his control over his province’s liquor stores in March 2025, removing U.S. alcohol from shelves in the country’s most populous province. Other premieres soon followed, delivering a nearly $150 million blow to the U.S. distilled spirits industry, alone. While Alberta and Saskatchewan lifted their bans after just a few months, the two provinces account for less than 20 percent of the Canadian population.

Even if the premieres do end their boycott, there’s no guarantee that Canadians — who are also upset by Trump’s jabs that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state — will be quick to resume purchases.

“I would be surprised, even if the liquor goes back on the shelves, if Canadians buy it,” said the industry figure.

While Trump officials have repeatedly faulted Canada for being one of two countries that retaliated against the president’s tariffs — along with China — Trump is also attempting to get the country to drop longstanding protectionist measures for its dairy industry, a source of tension between the two neighbors for decades.

On the Canadian side, negotiators LeBlanc and Janice Charette have been pushing for reductions to U.S. national security tariffs imposed on automobiles and steel and aluminum. But the Trump administration has held firm on the 50 percent steel tariffs, according to three people familiar with the status of the metals discussions.

“That’s probably going to be something that is much more of a longer term” discussion, one of the people said, “if at all.”

Greer stressed to reporters last week that he has been satisfied with the steel tariffs and their impact on the domestic steel industry.

“This is working,” he argued, pointing to rising domestic steel production. Through mid-August, U.S. steelmaking was up more than 5 percent year-to-date on the same period last year, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, and capacity utilization was up two percentage points.

“We’re seeing huge success in the American steel industry, which is exactly what President Trump wanted,” Greer said during a trip to Iowa Thursday.

Mike Blanchfield contributed to this report from Ottawa.

ROME — In the barns where the milk for Italy’s most famous cheese is produced, the fans have barely stopped whirring for two months. As temperatures across northern Italy push close to 40 degrees Celsius, cows stand almost motionless, tongues lolling, while automated sprinklers soak their backs.

Italy is now enduring its fourth major heat wave of an exceptionally brutal summer. The prolonged heat is piling costs on the €4 billion industry behind Parmigiano Reggiano, forcing farmers to spend heavily on cooling their animals while drought and dwindling water supplies make it harder and more expensive to grow the forage needed to feed them.

Farmers have received support from regional authorities, the EU and a producers’ consortium to help them adapt to the heat, but they say the funding falls short of the investment increasingly required.

For producers of the protected cheese, there is no possibility of escaping somewhere cooler. Under the strict rules governing Parmigiano Reggiano’s EU Protected Designation of Origin — that secures its added value on the market — the cows, their milk and the cheese must remain tied to a defined area of northern Italy. At least 75 percent of their forage must also be grown locally.

Dairy cows can begin suffering from heat stress at around 25C, depending on humidity, according to Giovanni Buonaiuto, a vet with the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium, which defends producers’ interests. Their digestive system generates considerable heat as they break down food, while cows have relatively few sweat glands with which to disperse it. “It’s as if the cow has a radiator inside her,” Buonaiuto told POLITICO.

As temperatures rise, cows eat less and stand for longer to expose themselves to moving air. They rest and ruminate less, milk production falls and prolonged heat can also affect fertility.

Buonaiuto said milk production has fallen by about 10 percent on average during the summer, although the impact varies sharply between farms depending on their cooling systems.

Overheating herds

Federica Dall’Aglio, who raises 400 cattle on the plains near the city of Parma, said each cow was producing five to six kilograms less milk a day, a fall of roughly 20 percent, despite fans and water sprays installed to protect her herd.

The cows now spend much of their time beneath the fans and water sprays, she added, as they’re reluctant to move away from the cooling systems.

Outside the barns, farmers are reorganizing their working days around the heat too. Some now cut and collect hay at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., Buonaiuto said, before the morning heat causes the hay to crumble. By 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., it can already be too hot.

Keeping the cows cool comes at a high cost.

Luca Cotti, a sixth-generation dairy farmer and president of farmers’ association Coldiretti in the northern Emilia-Romagna region, said electricity consumption in barns can double or even triple during extreme heat as cooling systems run almost continuously.

He recalled worrying about winter 20 years ago, with the weather freezing drinking water and other systems in the barn. Now investment is directed toward surviving summer.

The new normal

Extreme summer heat was once exceptional and might last a week before temperatures eased, Cotti said. Now, he said, “it’s normal.” This year, “since June, it has never let up.”

For some smaller producers with older facilities, the question is whether the investment is still worthwhile.

Dall’Aglio’s family has been investing in cooling systems for around 15 years, recently adding solar panels to help offset their growing electricity needs.

Across the Parmigiano Reggiano supply chain, such technology is becoming commonplace. Around half of its dairy farms, responsible for 70 percent of its milk, have invested in advanced cooling systems, including fans, motion-sensitive water sprays and automated temperature monitoring, according to the consortium president, Nicola Bertinelli.

The remaining 30 percent of milk comes largely from farms in the cooler hills and mountains, he said.

With persistently high temperatures, insufficient rainfall and water levels in major Alpine lakes approaching historic lows, authorities in the Po River basin, which supports agriculture across northern Italy through a network of tributaries and canals, have declared a high level of drought severity.

Alfalfa, an important source of forage for the cows, is relatively resistant to drought because of its deep roots. But Dall’Aglio said her family had already been irrigating heavily to ensure a good hay crop this year.

When rivers run too low for irrigation, some farmers have to pump groundwater instead, which can make irrigation around five times more expensive because of the energy required to extract it, according to Lorenzo Catellani of farmers’ association CIA Agricoltori Emilia-Romagna.

Coldiretti is calling on politicians to treat water storage as infrastructure rather than emergency relief.

Cotti said regional and national authorities need to invest in reservoirs and other water-storage infrastructure, arguing that individual farms cannot solve the growing problem of water scarcity alone.

Paradoxically, Parmesan producers normally worry about producing too much, not too little — and had sought to curb output this year. “We always have the brake on,” Cotti said, adding that high prices mean farmers have little difficulty increasing production when needed.

Despite the strain, producers insist there is no danger of Italy running short of Parmesan.

The cheese’s strong global market gives farmers greater scope to invest than producers in more fragile agricultural sectors.

For now, those investments are keeping Parmigiano production stable, although smaller farmers with aging barns may eventually choose to close rather than spend the money needed to adapt. For now, there is little to do but wait for the temperatures to fall. “We keep going like this,” Cotti said. “We hope it ends as soon as possible.”