Visegrad farmers urge EU to halt duty-free imports of low-quality Ukrainian products

The EU and its member states should stop importing duty-free yet low-quality agricultural products from Ukraine, farmers’ organisations from Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia have said in a recent appeal to their governments, calling for a joint approach and protection of farmers and producer interests.

The call on Visegrad governments follows a communiqué signed by representatives of the organisations who discussed the matter last Thursday and Friday.

“Due to the decline in livestock production since the 1990s by about a third, we are forced to export millions of tonnes of cereals to Western markets, which are now occupied by Ukrainian production. This does not have to meet strict quality standards, just as Ukrainian farms do not have to comply with the regulations and regulations resulting from the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy,” said Jan Doležal, President of the Czech Chamber of Agriculture, during the meeting.

The joint comuniqué calls on Visegrad governments “to act in a coordinated way to defend their own interests farmers and food producers by extending the unilateral ban on imports of certain commodities into our territory, as well as to extend and unify the list of such commodities.”

However, despite such calls, the European Commission insists trade continues to flow well but admits there is “some risk” of imports driving down prices and threatening local production.

“We do not see any significant adverse development on the EU agricultural market,” the Commission’s Deputy director for agriculture, Pierre Bascou, told MEPs concerned about the rise in Ukrainian imports at a meeting of the European Parliament’s agriculture committee (AGRI).

However, the Commission has identified “some vulnerability and risk” in sectors like poultry, eggs and sugar, said Bascou, noting that “this is an element we are monitoring very closely.”

Some four months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in June 2022, the EU temporarily lifted restrictions on imports from Ukraine, which led to an influx of Ukrainian goods into the EU market that pushed prices down, especially in frontline countries like Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Romania.

Representatives of the Agrarian Chamber of the Czech Republic, the Slovak Agricultural and Food Chamber, the Polish Regional Council of Agricultural Chambers and the Hungarian National Chamber of Agriculture agreed that it is necessary to support the war-affected Ukrainian economy, but this cannot be at the cost of destroying farmers and food producers in Central Europe.

They also said that their respective governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia should work towards finding a Europe-wide solution to help Ukraine export agricultural produce to its traditional customers in third non-EU countries.

Speaking of Ukraine’s possible future accession to the EU and its potential impact on the single market, the agricultural organisations said the country must first meet all EU accession conditions and adopt EU legislation in the field of agriculture and food – pointing to the otherwise fundamental distortion of the EU internal market.

The meeting was also attended by Slovakia’s new Agricultural and Rural Development Minister, Richard Takáč (Smer). He fully endorsed the meeting’s conclusion and promised to present the communiqué to his ministerial colleagues at the next meeting of the EU Agriculture Council on Monday and Tuesday.

(Aneta Zachová | Euractiv.cz)

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