European Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski said on Tuesday that it was necessary to extend “at least” until the end of October the restrictions imposed by five EU states on the import of Ukrainian cereals.
While the lifting of customs duties in May 2022 led to a surge in the influx of Ukrainian agricultural products into the EU, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria unilaterally banned imports of cereals from Ukraine in mid-April 2023, invoking saturated silos and collapsing local prices.
As the guardian of the EU’s trade policy, the European Commission reached an agreement at the end of April with the four States and Romania providing for “safeguard measures” until 5 June to allow them to block the marketing of Ukrainian wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower on their soil, provided they did not prevent their transit to other countries.
Wojciechowski said at the end of a meeting of EU agriculture ministers that the restrictions needed to be extended at least until the end of October, and ideally until the end of the year, after the harvests, otherwise Europe would have a huge problem.
He said, however, that the Commission had not finalised its position.
The commissioner said the problem was that there was now more grain in the reserves of the riparian states than in Ukraine, hence the need to extend the temporary import restrictions and improve the situation. He added that logistical resources needed to be beefed up to clear cereal stocks.
The restrictions were denounced by Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Mykola Solsky, who was in Brussels on Tuesday: “We believe that extending them is not the right course of action, and we are opposed to them,” Solsky said, believing that this would play into Moscow’s hands.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had already denounced the “severe, even cruel, protectionist measures.”
