POlen's Prime Minister Donald Tusk has called for action in the European Union against Russian imports in the dispute over agricultural imports from Ukraine. After a so-called agricultural summit on Thursday with representatives of Polish farmers, he said: “We will work together to ensure that an embargo is imposed on Russian and Belarusian agricultural products.” Tusk wants to convince his coalition partners on Friday to introduce a parliamentary resolution on this. It is “absolutely unacceptable that we should limit Ukrainian imports while Russian ones flow freely into all of Europe.”
Latvia's Prime Minister Evika Siliņa Tusk had previously reported in Warsaw that her country had already imposed such an embargo. According to the European Commission, grain imports to the Union from Russia have roughly doubled compared to the average of the four previous years. In the second half of 2023 they were a good one million tonnes, most of which went to Italy. The Ukrainian online media Ukrainska Pravda reported that there was heavy truck traffic at the Polish-Belarusian border crossing at Kukuryki.
Tusk is looking for European solutions
For weeks, farmers in Poland have been protesting against measures, such as tariff exemption on agricultural products, with which the EU is trying to help Ukraine, which has been damaged by the war. The largest border crossings with Ukraine are blocked by demonstrators, as are highways in many regions of Poland. According to Kiev, 2,200 trucks were waiting to cross to Poland on Friday, with a similar number waiting on the Polish side. Despite talks between both governments at ministerial level, the blockades continue.
Now Tusk, President of the EU Council until 2019, brought new solutions into play. They are intended to free the EU agricultural market “of around 30 million tonnes of grain surplus, of which around nine million are in Poland”. He supports the idea that the EU finances the purchase and transport of grain from European markets “for the benefit of countries in need”.
To recover the agricultural market, Tusk also proposed a complete border closure with Ukraine, although this would be painful for Polish exporters. Kiev's State Secretary for Economic Affairs Taras Katschka wrote on Facebook: “Stopping a trade that amounts to $11.7 billion a year, even for one day, will be all too painful.” Tusk also tried to respond to the farmers' demand for the abolition of the “Green Deal”. The regulations of this EU project would have to become more flexible and not have a “compulsory character”. Warsaw will draw up a list of demands.
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