Poland secures EU concession to limit food exports from Ukraine

The new government in Warsaw has won a concession from the EU in its battle to limit Ukrainian food exports, with the bloc’s top trade official saying Brussels would control the influx of farm products if they risked depressing prices in Poland and other neighbouring countries., reported from The Financial Times.

Poland and Hungary introduced unilateral import bans on Ukrainian produce in April 2023, following widespread protests from farmers about cheap exports from Ukraine resulting in grain gluts on their domestic market. The ban was in defiance of EU common trade law.

Now the European Commission is set to offer additional safeguards to countries that border Ukraine when it extends its tariff-free, quota-free access from June.

Valdis Dombrovskis, trade commissioner, told the Financial Times that the proposal should come this week and would likely include "country specific safeguards” allowing Brussels to block imports if a particular country’s market was flooded. Currently, the impact on the EU market as a whole is assessed, reducing the likelihood of action.

"We will be looking at how we can provide additional assurances to Poland and other member states and one way of doing this is introducing country-specific safeguards,” he said.

"We see that this regional impact of trade or exports of Ukrainian agricultural products is very unevenly distributed. It’s primarily felt by immediate neighbouring countries whereas [it] doesn’t create much disruption for the EU market as a whole.”

Dombrovskis said the extension would cover the year to June 2025. The proposal must be approved by the European parliament and a majority of member states.

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