March 12 (Reuters) - The global financial crisis has sparked
protests in many parts of Europe this year, including one by
European farmers in Prague on Thursday.
* denotes an updated item
BOSNIA -- Bosnia's Muslim-Croat parliament cancelled a
session on Feb. 26 rather than confront protesters complaining
about plans to cut benefits to narrow a big budget gap.
BRITAIN -- British workers held a series of protests at
power plants against the use of foreign contractors on critical
energy sites. They voted to end strikes on Feb. 5 after Total
agreed to hire more British workers at its Lindsey oil refinery.
BULGARIA -- Hundreds of workers at Bulgaria's Kremikovtzi
steel mill protested on March 9 over planned lay-offs and unpaid
salaries, demanding the Socialist-led government find a buyer
for the insolvent plant.
* CZECH REPUBLIC -- Thousands of farmers from the Czech
Republic, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia and Poland
marched through Prague on Thursday to demand higher milk prices
and subsidies to boost incomes hit by the economic crisis.
FRANCE -- Unions and employers' groups criticised President
Nicolas Sarkozy on Feb. 19 over new measures to tackle the
economic crisis. Sarkozy offered an extra 2.65 billion euros
($3.4 billion) of social spending in an effort to quell labour
unrest over a previous stimulus package. France's eight union
federations called for a day of action on March 19.
-- Up to 2.5 million people demonstrated around France on
Jan. 29 over pay and job protection. On March 5, unions and
authorities signed a deal to end a six-week general strike over
wages and prices that had paralysed the Caribbean island of
Guadeloupe, a region of France and part of the EU. A union
leader was killed, shops were burned and looted in the protests.
* Thousands of workers marched in France's Indian Ocean
territory La Reunion on March 5 and on March 10 in a campaign of
strikes and protests to push for wage increases. Police fired
teargas at protesters after they torched cars overnight on
Wednesday. One gendarme was seriously injured.
GERMANY -- 15,000 Opel workers from Germany rally on Feb. 26
at the German HQ of their struggling company, demanding parent
General Motors scrap plans for plant closures in Europe.
GREECE -- Greek farmers protesting low prices ended a
two-week blockade of a border crossing with Bulgaria on Feb. 7
when the government pledged 500 million euros ($640 million) in
subsidies on products such as olive oil and wheat.
IRELAND -- Nearly 100,000 people marched through Dublin on
Feb. 21 to protest at government cutbacks in the face of a
deepening recession and bailouts for the banks.
LATVIA -- A new Latvian prime minister was appointed on Feb.
26 after coalition government collapsed, the second to succumb
to the financial crisis after Iceland. The agriculture minister
quit on Feb. 3 after protests by farmers over falling incomes.
LITHUANIA -- Police fired teargas on Jan. 16 to disperse
demonstrators who pelted parliament with stones in protest at
social spending cuts. Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius vowed to
press on with an austerity plan.
MONTENEGRO -- Aluminium workers on Feb. 9 demanded to be
paid and an immediate resumption of suspended production at the
Kombinat Aluminijuma Podgorica, a Russian-owned plant.
POLAND -- Up to 10,000, mostly arms industry workers
demonstrated on March 6 against lay-offs after Poland announced
defence budget cuts. In Gdansk, 3,000 workers protested against
power producer Energa's job cut plans.
RUSSIA -- On Jan. 31, thousands of opposition supporters
rallied in Moscow and the far eastern port of Vladivostok over
hardship caused by the financial crisis. The next day hundreds
of Moscow demonstrators called for Russia's leaders to resign.
On Feb. 23, hundreds of communists rallied in Moscow to
protest the Kremlin's handling of the economic crisis. Two days
earlier, the opposition had rallied about 350 people in the
capital to demand early presidential elections.
* Sixteen steelworkers began a hunger strike on March 10
over wage cuts at ESTAR's Zlatoust steel mill, a rare show of
dissent in a country where unemployment rates have soared to
their highest in a decade.
UKRAINE - Hundreds of Ukrainians protested on Feb. 23, some
urging President Viktor Yushchenko to quit, others demanding
their money back from banks hit by the financial crisis.
