Poland lifts ban on Ukrainian imports

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: News Agencies
21 Apr 2023 17:31

Food items (such as sugar, meat, fruits, and vegetables) will be permitted transit; however, this excludes any products listed on Poland's market.

A dump truck unloads grain in a granary in the village of Zghurivka, Ukraine, Aug. 9, 2022 (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

Early today, at 2:00 am, Poland lifted the ban on Ukrainian-exported grain after a week-long ban for market regulation purposes.

Polish authorities announced that food items (such as sugar, meat, fruits, and vegetables) will be permitted transit; however, this excludes any products listed on the country's market.

"We assume that the check-ins will be quite smooth, so far there are [sic] no signs that queues will form," Bartosz Zbaraszczuk, head of the Polish customs agency, told RMF24 radio.

Poland and many other EU countries imposed a ban on tariff-free Ukrainian grain after farmers protested the sharp decrease in prices caused by the increasingly abundant and cheap Ukrainian products flooding the market.

Ever since the beginning of the war, Ukraine has been using land transit routes through Poland to export products instead of the Black Sea route.

The Polish Cabinet convened in Warsaw on Saturday whereby Agriculture Minister Robert Telus raised the issue of unchecked inflow and import of low-quality agricultural products from Ukraine.

The Cabinet in a statement said that it has "authorized the minister of agriculture and the minister of development and technology to issue relevant legislation to protect the Polish agricultural market from destabilization, including a temporary ban on imports of agricultural products from Ukraine."

Later on Tuesday, Poland and Ukraine brokered a deal to resume the transit of products under strict supervision and regulation of exported products.

"We will let such a transport out of our sight only when it enters the port to be loaded, for example, grain onto a ship or leaves the Polish border," Zbaraszczuk said.

Polish farmers have expressed their discontent with the government going back against the earlier decision, despite the government's attempt at containing their frustration by issuing farming subsidies.

This will not relieve the situation on our farms, in our warehouses because Ukrainian products would enter into competition with our products," Wieslaw Burzynski of the Pomeranian Chamber of Agriculture said.

Earlier this month, the European Commission was reportedly studying a new package of assistance to mitigate the severe competition posed by duty-free Ukranian products, according to spokesperson Balazs Ujvaris.

The first farmer assistance package was employed back in March, whereby $61.2 million worth of financial compensation was allocated for Polish, Bulgarian, and Romanian farmers. Additionally, comparable sums of financial compensation are expected to be dedicated by the national governments once EC approves it.