The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced on Wednesday 19 April a new €100 million package of EU funds to support farmers in the EU countries most affected by the fall in cereal prices due to increased imports of Ukrainian grain into their countries.
“We are now preparing to present a second financial support package of €100 million and a 200% co-financing rate, for affected farmers, as part of a common European approach”, the Commission President said in a letter to the leaders of the five EU countries concerned (Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Bulgaria).
This amount completes a first envelope of €56.3 million euros granted last month to support the most affected farmers. This support will be financed from the agricultural crisis reserve, which has almost €500 million per year.
Safeguard clause. But that’s not all. Ms von der Leyen pointed out that the Commission will also take preventive measures under the ‘safeguard clause’ included in the Regulation on trade liberalisation with Ukraine (see EUROPE 12965/11). These preventive measures will counteract “the deterioration of the situation of Union producers for specific products, namely wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seeds”.
“The measure would allow imports into the five Member States bordering Ukraine for transit purposes only, and exports to other Member States and the rest of the world”, an EU source said.
The measure would apply until the end of June.
“We don’t need the approval of the Member States, because it is an emergency measure”, says an EU source. This should replace unilateral measures imposed by Member States. The common trade policy requires an EU-wide solution, the same source said.
As a result of the Russian-led war in Ukraine, the EU had suspended tariffs on all products imported from Ukraine from June 2022 until June 2023. In February, the Commission proposed to renew this measure for one year, with a reinforced safeguard mechanism (see EUROPE 13128/4).
But instead of a simple transit, the neighbouring European States saw maize, wheat or sunflower from Ukraine accumulate on their soil due to logistical problems, which caused local prices to fall.
This has led Poland, Hungary, Slovakia (and Bulgaria since Wednesday) to ban grain imports from Ukraine to protect their farmers.
Hungary has even announced an extension of the embargo to dozens of Ukrainian agri-food products, according to a decree issued by Viktor Orbán’s government. Poland reached an agreement with Ukraine on Tuesday to resume imports in the coming days.
Link to the letter: https://aeur.eu/f/6e2 (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur and Léa Marchal)