At the ‘Agriculture’ Council held on 14 July, the Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian and Slovakian agriculture ministers voiced their grievances regarding the future of trade with Ukraine.
A few days earlier, these countries – with the exception of Romania, which joined the appeal at the last minute – had issued a joint declaration expressing their concern at the agreement reached between the European Commission and Kyiv on agricultural trade (see EUROPE 13674/5).
The five countries regret that the European Commission did not choose to maintain the rate quotas in the trade agreement as they were before the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. They are of the opinion that the proposed increase in quotas on sensitive products is too high.
As for the safeguard measures planned by the European Commission, these should also apply to agricultural products that have already been liberalised, according to the joint declaration.
In addition, the Commission must consider setting up a specific fund to compensate farmers who would be adversely affected by imports from Ukraine, according to the five countries.
The European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, Christophe Hansen, refuted all the criticisms levelled at the agreement during the debate on the subject, which was held on Monday. For example, he felt that the import figures could be read differently. “For wheat, we have agreed on a moderate increase of between 1 and 1.3 million tonnes. This represents an 80% drop compared to the volumes seen during the peak of imports under the Autonomous Trade Measures (ATM) regime, when imports totalled 6.4 million tonnes”, he pointed out.
However, Mr Hansen said he was taking account of the concerns of these five countries, the majority of which share a border with Ukraine.
During the discussion, however, several EU Member States supported the agreement. France, Germany, Lithuania, Estonia, Sweden, Finland and Latvia emphasised the need to support the Ukrainian economy and therefore its exports.
See the joint statement: https://aeur.eu/f/hva (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)