Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki assured on Wednesday that Warsaw does not intend to open borders for agricultural products from Ukraine. “We are protecting our agriculture, so we are not opening the borders for agricultural goods from Ukraine,” Polish Radio quoted him as saying Wednesday.
“The war in Ukraine is having an increasingly serious impact on the agricultural market, and this has a negative impact on Poles, so we have imposed an embargo on goods from Ukraine,” Morawiecki said.
He admitted that “in a couple of months, the EU intends to reopen the borders for grain imports from Ukraine.”
“We do not agree to this, we will not open the borders and we will not allow destabilization of our economy. We are obliged to protect Polish interests and our agriculture,” the Polish Prime Minister emphasized.
Polish Agriculture Minister Robert Telusz said that the meeting of agricultural ministers reached an agreement and signed a petition to extend the ban on imports of four grains from Ukraine until the end of 2023.
“The restriction of grain imports from Ukraine has not affected transit. In February, corn transit amounted to 114,000 tons and in June 260,000 tons. Therefore, the European Commission’s decision to open the borders on September 15 is not meaningfully justified,” the Polish Agriculture Ministry quoted Telusz as saying on Twitter.
According to the Polish minister, the ministers of Ukraine and Moldova were invited to the meeting of agricultural ministers in Warsaw, but they could not come for objective reasons. The Polish minister expressed hope for a meeting in the future.
“We want to help Ukraine in transit. We know that this war is a war that we have to win,” Telusz said and added that it will be won when solutions will be “implemented that will help us in this.”
Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, in agreement with the European Commission (EC), have banned imports of wheat, corn, rapeseed and sunflower seeds from Ukraine since May 2.
Problems for agricultural producers from a number of European countries associated with the surplus of Ukrainian grain and other agricultural products in the markets of Eastern Europe began in the first months of 2023. In many respects, they were provoked by the temporary abolition of customs duties on imports of grain and oilseeds from Ukraine by the EU. Due to this measure by Brussels, imports of agricultural products from Ukraine to the border states increased significantly.
Ukrainian products, in particular, grain, sunflower, eggs, poultry meat, sugar, apples and apple juice, berries, flour, honey and pasta in unprecedented quantities began to settle on the shelves in these countries, which led to a sharp drop in prices and hit hard the farmers in these countries.
Meanwhile, as First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Trade Yulia Sviridenko said on Wednesday at a meeting with the European Business Association (EBA), Ukraine is categorically against the extension of the EU’s discriminatory ban on the supply of a number of agro-commodities to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania after September 15.
According to her, the ban on exports of wheat, barley, rapeseed and sunflower seeds to the above five countries is “discriminatory on the part of the nearest neighbors, especially when Ukraine has an enemy at sea.”
Asked what would happen if the ban was still extended, the first deputy prime minister said that in such a case Ukraine would be forced to consider mirror measures.
“I would not like to say out loud and believe that this is a realistic step, but we think that some mirror measures can be applied,” Sviridenko said.
