“What we need to achieve now is to get confirmation from the EU side that they will definitely extend the trade autonomous measures, and we'll be able to share that message with Ukrainian businesses”, said Ukrainian Minister for the Economy, Yulia Svyrydenko, in Stockholm on Friday 10 March. There she met with EU Trade Ministers to discuss how to support Ukraine through trade.
Member States and the European Parliament are due to vote in the coming months on the extension of EU measures that will allow all Ukrainian imports to be exempt from customs duties (see EUROPE 13128/4).
For most of the EU27 trade ministers, this appears to be a given. “We’ve been very positive for such a prolongation for at least 12 months”, said Swedish Trade Minister Johan Forssell.
EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis even sent a positive signal regarding the Ukrainian demand for longer-term measures: “Beyond this, we’ll work on possible permanent and reciprocal trade liberalisation”, he said.
However, some countries fear a large influx of Ukrainian agricultural products, such as chicken and eggs. Most of these goods were still subject to tariff quotas prior to June 2022. “We have proposed quite strong safeguard provisions in our autonomous trade measures allowing us to react quickly if we see risks of distortions”, said Dombrovskis.
For Ukraine, however, there is nothing to fear: “I don't think there is risk because even before the measures, we had a huge presence on the EU market. EU and Ukrainian companies were already competing with each other, which suggests an ordinary market situation. I don't think they can have much of a bad influence on the EU market”, explained Svyrydenko. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)