The EU will import Ukrainian grain
The European Commission proposes to take urgent measures for this and promises to pay financial aid to five EU countries, UkrAgroConsult reports with reference to Uryadovyy kur’yer.
Negotiations on unblocking the import of Ukrainian agricultural products to the EU between Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and the European Commission are ongoing. The EU has offered a financial aid package to five neighboring countries of Ukraine in exchange for the lifting of restrictive measures on Ukrainian agricultural goods.
This was announced by the Vice-President of the European Commission, Valdis Dombrovskis, after a meeting with representatives of Ukraine and five EU member states, which faced the problem of excess imports of Ukrainian grain, due to which four of them — Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria — decided to suspend the import of Ukrainian agricultural products.
“These countries will receive the package proposed by the European Commission on the condition that they cancel their unilateral measures,” Valdis Dombrovskis emphasized. According to him, the European Commission understands the importance of the rapid application of a joint approach of the EU, and not of unilateral decisions, which may lead to the emergence of new numerous bans, which will endanger the internal European market.
Meanwhile, during bilateral consultations, Kyiv and Warsaw have already agreed to renew the import of Ukrainian agricultural products through the territory of Poland.
“We managed to find mechanisms to ensure that not a single ton of Ukrainian grain remained in Poland, and agricultural products were transported through Poland further to Europe or Polish ports on the Baltic Sea,” said Polish Agriculture Minister Robert Telus at a press conference after talks with Ukrainian officials in Warsaw.
The Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, Mykola Solskyi, during a briefing for journalists, confirmed that the transit of Ukrainian agricultural products through Poland will be restored. He explained that Poland will apply additional control to transit through its territory. According to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, most Ukrainian products (approximately 80%) are transported by land via transit through Romania, in second place is Poland – 10%, and the smallest transit is carried out through Hungary – 5-6% and Slovakia – 1.5%.
As European Commission officials explained during a briefing in Brussels, the European Union has no intention of stopping the import of agricultural products from Ukraine and is ready to financially support those countries that are faced with the problems of a surplus of Ukrainian grain. Brussels wants to guarantee the transit of agricultural goods to third countries.
Among the emergency measures proposed by the EU to protect farmers from countries neighboring Ukraine are the following: agricultural products will be able to be transported through the territory of Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria only by transit, and sold already in other EU countries or third countries. The participants of the briefing stressed that there is no question of renewing customs duties on Ukrainian imports, because the European Commission intends to extend the duty-free regime for Ukraine for another year.
Urgent measures proposed by the European Commission will be implemented at the EU level. Therefore, the ban on the import of Ukrainian agricultural products, which was unilaterally introduced by Warsaw, Budapest, Bratislava and Sofia, will be subject to cancellation. Urgent measures will apply to four types of grain from Ukraine: wheat, fodder corn, sunflower seeds and rapeseed. The European Commission sees no reason to apply these measures to other types of agricultural products from Ukraine, but they intend to conduct an investigation.
The emergency measures are expected to be in place until the end of June. The European Commission believes that this is exactly how long it will take to sell off all agricultural products from Ukraine, which have accumulated in the warehouses of five neighboring countries. It is proposed to monitor compliance with the new rules by means of electronic sealing of containers.
The governments of five EU countries decided to stop the import of Ukrainian grains after mass protests by local farmers who demanded to protect the domestic market, as the influx of agricultural products from Ukraine led to a sharp drop in purchase prices. For example, in 2021, Poland imported approximately 3,000 tons of wheat from Ukraine. In 2022, this indicator was already 500,000 tons. Corn — about 6,000 tons in 2021 and almost 2 million tons in 2022. Therefore, among the measures to resolve this situation, the European Commission promises to provide five EU countries with a second package of financial assistance in the amount of 100 million euros.
Why did Ukrainian grain, which was supposed to be imported through neighboring EU countries only in transit and exported further for export to third countries, end up in such large quantities in the warehouses of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary?
The European Commission explains this situation with several reasons. First, in recent months, the grain corridor agreement between Turkey, Russia and the UN to unblock Ukrainian grain exports has not been working properly. Therefore, according to a high-ranking official of the EC, the most important task now should be to ensure the transit of Ukrainian agricultural products through the territory of the EU by all possible means.
Secondly, it was “cheaper for business” to store Ukrainian grain in the warehouses of EU countries, the European Commission explained. The fact is that the price of transportation of Ukrainian grain is quite high, it is almost 40% of its final price, although the normal indicator of the cost of transportation should not be more than 10%.
“On the world market, this does not allow Ukrainian grain to compete with much cheaper Russian grain,” European officials explained. In order to reduce these costs, it is necessary to improve the transport infrastructure to the seaports of the EU countries in the near future and to increase the volume of transportation through the Danube, through which almost half of export grain from Ukraine is transported.
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