Brussels, 27/09/2000 (Agence Europe) - After one and a half years of negotiation, the European Commission and the Polish government came to an agreement Tuesday night on the terms of an agreement on complete liberalisation of a large part of farm trade between the EU and Poland, pending Poland's accession to the EU. According to the Commission, the agreement will dispense from duties (both import and export) some 75% of bilateral farm trade. The main groups of products concerned by trade liberalisation are fruit and vegetables, meat, cheese, butter, powdered milk and corn. The agreement has still to be approved by the Member States.
Poland is thus the last of the applicant countries from Central and Eastern Europe to conclude such an agreement with the EU.
The so called "double zero" negotiations with Poland where blocked for several months, notably due to the Warsaw decision, last year, to considerably increase the import duties on a series of European agricultural products (as decision that the EU has always considered to be incompatible with the provisions of the European Agreement, which Poland contests). On Wednesday, the Commission spokesperson kept himself to saying that the dispute over the increase in import duties in Poland had been resolved in a way that would enable to 're-establish EU export opportunities to their previous levels".
The Agriculture Commissioner, Franz Fischler, welcomed the agreement. "This is good for trade, this is good news for the enlargement process", he said. According to Mr Fischler, the agreement with Poland covers a volume of trade of more than one million Euro, that is to say a widened range of products than the agreements with the other candidate countries. Gunter Verheugen, the Commissioner for Enlargement, also said he was in favour of the agreement which is "good for the enlargement process". "it will enable to broach the accession negations in the agricultural field with a mutual spirit of mutual good will