The Hungarian government has removed cane and beet sugar from the list of banned Ukrainian products for import after September 15, 2023, Agroinform.hu reported.
According to the report, the Hungarian government’s resolution on measures related to the transportation of certain agricultural products from Ukraine, which restricted the import of 24 Ukrainian agricultural products after September 15, removed the line referring to cane and beet sugar, as well as hard sucrose.
The decision came into force on October 10.
As reported, the European Commission announced on September 15 that it would not extend restrictions on imports of agricultural products from Ukraine to five neighboring EU countries (Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia) with some conditions to avoid a new surge in supplies.
The restrictions were imposed on May 2, 2023 and concerned imports of wheat, rapeseed, sunflower and corn. These five Eastern European member states argued that Ukrainian agricultural products, when imported duty-free into the EU, were settling with them and harming the local agribusiness sector.
After the restrictions were lifted, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia introduced unilateral bans. Poland expanded the list of products banned for import with rapeseed cake and meal, as well as corn bran, wheat flour and derivatives. Hungary brought the list to 24 commodity items.
Ukraine has filed a lawsuit with the WTO, accusing Poland, Hungary and Slovakia of discriminating against its agro-products.
Ukraine is currently negotiating the introduction of a licensing mechanism for exports of Ukrainian agro-commodities with mandatory verification in each of the five countries.
Ukraine will file a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against Poland, Hungary and Slovakia over their refusal to lift the ban on Ukrainian agricultural products, Taras Kachka, Deputy Minister of Economy and Trade and Ukraine’s trade representative, told Politico.
“It is important to prove that these actions are legally unlawful. That’s why tomorrow we will start the court proceedings,” Kachka said last Sunday, adding that Kyiv is preparing to take retaliatory measures against Polish fruit and vegetable exports.
Commenting on the introduction of unilateral bans by Poland, Hungary and Slovakia on Ukrainian grain after the European Commission’s decision to lift the restrictions, Kachka said that “in our opinion, these measures by Hungary and Poland are a statement of total distrust of the European Commission.”
Ukraine’s trade representative believes that the open defiance of Brussels by Poland, Hungary and Slovakia was not just an internal EU matter, but caused what he called “the biggest systemic problem” – whether international trading partners can trust what Brussels says on behalf of the EU.
“For many years, the European Commission has been the mediator in trade negotiations and the trade policy institution for the entire EU. And we are used to working on this basis,” Kachka said, adding that, in his opinion, “the systematic approach of Budapest and Warsaw to ignore the position of the EU institutions in trade policy will be a problem for the EU as a whole, because there is no unity here.”
Kyiv plans to sue the three countries at the World Trade Organization rather than through its own trade agreement with the EU. “I think the whole world needs to see how EU member states behave toward their trading partners and their Union, because it can affect other states,” he emphasized.
While Slovakia simply extended the EU’s previous ban on four types of grain, Poland over the weekend introduced additional bans on Ukrainian flour and feed. Hungary, according to Kaczka, is going even further and banning 25 more products that were not previously discussed, including meat.
“These arbitrary bans are ridiculous. I think that Hungary is making a political statement here that it wants to block trade with Ukraine and completely ignore Brussels. And that’s why I think this is a very bold move against both of us by Budapest,” Kachka emphasized.
While Hungary’s additional bans are mostly symbolic, given that Ukraine does not export much beef and pork to the country, Poland’s measures will affect a significant portion of Ukraine’s exports, Kachka said. If Warsaw does not lift these additional bans, “we will be forced to take measures in response to additional products and ban imports of fruits and vegetables from Poland.”
The governments in Budapest and Warsaw have said they are acting to protect their farmers from a surge of Ukrainian produce that has led to lower prices, but Kaczka denied that reasoning is flawed: “The Polish ban will not help farmers, it will not affect prices because prices are global – what they do is based on public opinion.”
An EU official told the publication that Brussels hopes to solve this problem by forcing Kyiv to impose its own export restrictions in the event of a sudden surge in exports.
When asked about this potential agreement, Kachka said that Kyiv is ready to “take responsibility for ensuring that exports from Ukraine do not cause a tsunami in neighboring countries” and will introduce a system of “real-time” grain export licenses for both countries, which will slow down exports to neighboring countries and allow Ukraine to “react quickly” if a surge is detected.
As reported, the ban on the export of wheat, barley, rapeseed and sunflower seeds from Ukraine to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, introduced on May 2 for the period until June 5, was extended until September 15.
On Friday, September 15, the EU allowed the ban to be lifted after Ukraine promised to take measures to tighten export controls to neighboring countries. On the same day, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia imposed unilateral bans on imports of Ukrainian agricultural products. In addition to wheat, rapeseed, sunflower, and corn, Poland banned imports of cereals and flour, while Hungary expanded the list to 25 items.
Hungary has decided to extend the ban on imports of 24 types of agricultural products from Ukraine that are under its national jurisdiction, Hungarian Agriculture Minister Istvan Nagy said on his Facebook page on Friday.
The Minister argued that this was to protect the interests of Hungarian farmers.
As reported, the European Commission did not extend the ban on exports of certain agricultural products from Ukraine to five countries after September 15, but Poland has also announced its unilateral extension.
The Hungarian government will protect farmers and, if necessary, close the border to some grain products coming from Ukraine from September 16, Hungarian Agriculture Minister Istvan Nagy told the Transit political festival in Tihany.
“If the EU does not extend the import ban on some Ukrainian grain products, which expires on September 15, Hungary will impose an import ban not only on four products, but on all 24 previous products in order to protect the domestic market,” the Hungarian publication agrarszektor.hu quoted the minister as saying.
According to him, Hungary’s agriculture has experienced one shock after another in recent years. The coronavirus epidemic, drought, the war raging in the neighborhood and its consequences, the energy crisis, and the fact that cheap Ukrainian agricultural products have flooded the European market duty-free are all difficulties for producers, he said.
“Although the harvest is better – a near-record amount of corn is expected this year – sales are facing difficulties due to cheap competition,” Nagy added.
As reported, Polish Agriculture Minister Robert Telusz said after a meeting of a coalition of five frontline countries in Poland on Friday that the position of Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Romania on the need to extend restrictive measures against Ukrainian wheat, rapeseed, corn and sunflower remains unchanged – a ban until the end of 2023.
The European Commission on June 5 agreed to extend until September 15 the restrictions on wheat, corn, rapeseed and sunflower exports from Ukraine to Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. “The restrictions do not mean a ban on the transit of these goods through Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia,” the document signed by EC chief Ursula von der Leyen said.
Source: https://www.agrarszektor.hu/szabalyozas/20230827/nagy-istvan-fenntartjuk-a-behozatali-tilalmat-44906
The Hungarian railroad on Saturday canceled trains #6284 from Debrecen to Mukachevo, #33 from Mukachevo to Budapest and #6285 from Zahony to Chop of “large passenger traffic and long border control,” Ukrzaliznytsia reported.
“The Hungarian railroad has just informed that today trains #6284 from Debrecen to Mukachevo, #33 from Mukachevo to Budapest and #6285 from Zahony to Chop will not run due to “large passenger traffic and long border control”. This is not the first such incident of this month,” Ukrzaliznytsia said in a Telegram message.
“We are unfortunate for the passengers waiting for these flights in Mukachevo, Chop and on the territory of Hungary; and although this route is served exactly by the Hungarian MAV START, we on the part of Ukrzaliznytsia apologize,” Ukrzaliznytsia notes.
“Having gone through the spring of 2022, we are not used to flight cancellations due to a large number of passengers and we value the reputation of the railroad as a whole as a predictable and most reliable transportation, so we will use all official channels with a demand to our Hungarian colleagues to establish uninterrupted traffic for our passengers,” Ukrzaliznytsia emphasized.
Hungarian Minister of Agriculture Istvan Nagy is not satisfied with the work of European solidarity corridors and believes that the expansion of the traditional maritime transport route, which now takes only 12% of Ukrainian agricultural products, will help to reduce the pressure on domestic markets of the EU.
“The current solidarity routes are not fulfilling their role, as the products remain in Ukraine’s neighboring countries. We used to have 40-50 thousand tons of grain, now we have 2.5 million tons. The purpose is to expand the traditional sea transport route, by which now only 12% of Ukrainian products leave. This will reduce the load on the land route and reduce the pressure on EU domestic markets,” the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture quoted him as saying at a press conference with his Polish counterpart Robert Telusz in Warsaw on Thursday.
Nagy said he had asked his Polish counterpart for a mandate to negotiate with the Turkish side to open new sea routes for grain exports in addition to the existing three Black Sea ports.
He called it important to maintain and expand cooperation among the five EU member states. “We are determined to continue to cooperate (…) to find a common European solution to this problem; it is an important humanitarian and solidarity goal,” the Hungarian minister stressed.
Nagy praised the joint actions of the five EU member states – Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia, as well as Poland and Hungary – in suspending imports of Ukrainian grain. Thanks to the joint implementation of the will “today we can protect our borders and farmers as a result of measures of the European Union, not national measures,” he said, and expressed regret that the restrictive measures are valid only until September 15.
Hungarian and Polish ministers stated that the restriction period until Sept. 15 was too short. “For example, the corn harvest will still be going on, so we definitely need to push for the extension (of restrictive measures – IF),” Nagy said.
Polish Minister of Agriculture Robert Telusz called important the Hungarian initiative to expand the Black Sea Route, which he said Warsaw would support. At the same time, he stressed the need for the development of land transport routes.
Telusz praised the merits of the Hungarian side in the creation of the five-member coalition on the grain issue. He noted that without the actions of this association the European Commission “would not have seen the problem at all”.
The Polish minister also stressed the importance of maintaining this alliance. “Together we can fight not only for issues important to our countries, but also for the future of Europe,” he said.
According to him, after the war is over, the process of Ukraine’s integration into the European Union can continue, and with it, “the issue of Ukrainian products will come up again.” “If today we do not make the European Commission develop real tools to solve this problem, the problem will have unpleasant consequences,” Telusz said.
He also said that he agreed with his Hungarian colleague to organize a meeting with Ukrainian Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Nicholas Solsky to find common solutions to solve the problem of grain imports.
