On Tuesday 17 October, Austria submitted a document entitled ‘A New Deal for Farmers’, which will be debated at the Agriculture Council on 23 and 24 October in Luxembourg. In it, Austria suggests a bilateral safeguard clause to facilitate Ukrainian cereal exports to the countries of destination.
It is of the utmost importance that the transit of these cereals through the EU “functions smoothly”, reads the Austrian document.
Among the measures envisaged to guarantee the stability of the EU’s agricultural markets, Austria is calling for measures complementary to monitoring these markets (as part of the implementation of the regulation on autonomous trade measures).
To this end, a bilateral safeguard clause for certain sensitive agricultural products (as the EU has implemented in trade agreements) should be discussed, states the Austrian document. Such a bilateral safeguard clause would have to contain a concrete trigger threshold (e.g. pre-defined import quantities) and concrete measures (e.g. only imports under customs transit procedures to third countries possible when the safeguard clause is triggered), explains the document submitted by Austria.
It is also asking the European Commission to examine the possibility of extending existing transit procedures to guarantee transport to a third country, which “could relieve the grain market and ensure that products reach less developed countries more easily and at a lower cost”.
Ukraine recently announced that it had “paused” its WTO proceedings against three EU countries that have maintained restrictions on Ukrainian grain imports, while it looks for solutions (see EUROPE 13271/23). The Commission lifted the safeguard measures on Ukrainian cereals in mid-September (see EUROPE 13252/2).
Link to the Austrian document: https://aeur.eu/f/944 (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)