Posted on April, 13, 2023 at 12:40 am
The problem of Ukrainian grain imports flooding the markets of Central and Eastern Europe and bringing down prices was further highlighted on Wednesday as Polish farmers attempted to blockade the rail line on the border with Ukraine, but a cordon of police cars prevented them from doing so.
Speaking on Wednesday morning at a press conference in Hrubieszow, on the Polish border with Ukraine, Michal Kolodzejczak, leader of Agrounia, one of the farming unions organising the protests, appealed to police to allow the farmers to proceed with their protest, “unless you want your family to eat bread made with grain meant for industrial purposes.”
Kolodzejczak said the farmers’ protest was planned to last a week.
The accusation from Kolodzejczak about the status of Ukrainian grain is part of a wider problem Polish farmers have identified with these imports since Russia’s war with Ukraine blocked Ukrainian exports via the Black Sea.
Polish farmers have been protesting for months against the rising volume of Ukrainian agricultural products, which are meant to pass through Poland on their way to other destinations outside Europe as part of “solidarity routes”, but which remain stuck in Poland and bring down the prices of similar Polish produce. They also claim the products are not undergoing any checks at the border, with the effect that cereals meant for industrial purposes end up on plates in Polish homes.
The dispute has taken on a political hue, with the Polish agriculture minister Henryk Kowalczyk resigning from his post on April 5 amid rising anger at his inability to solve the issue. Farming leaders claim the reason the Polish government has not stopped cheap Ukrainian products from being dumped on the Polish market is because companies close to the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party are profiting from these imports.
“A handful of people in this country connected to PiS are getting rich on the back of this trade, while the rest of us are getting poorer,” claimed Kolodzejczak at the press conference.
On Tuesday, the online portal Wirtualna Polska published a partial list of companies importing grain from Ukraine, which was obtained from the state veterinary authority. Among the importers, there are two companies connected to PiS: Wipasz, which had a PiS parliamentarian as advisor to its president, and Cedrob, whose president is a former PiS member, known to have good relations with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Warsaw last week and met with Morawiecki, during which the two sides reportedly promised to come up with solutions to the growing problem. Poland’s new agriculture minister, Robert Telus, met with his Ukrainian counterpart, Mykola Solskyi on April 7 for talks, during which Kyiv promised to halt exports of wheat, corn, sunflower and rapeseed to Poland until the new season, according to the Ukrainian government.
In the meantime, the Polish government has been trying to push Brussels into arriving at a European solution.
To support Ukraine and avoid a food crisis in African countries for whom Ukrainian imports are key, the EU had dropped tariffs on Ukrainian agricultural imports on the assumption that most of them would only pass through EU countries on their way to other markets.
In late March, the prime ministers of Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia reportedly wrote to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urging her to reintroduce tariffs unless other solutions can be found.
So far, the letter seems to have had no impact, as the European Commission is planning to prolong the duty-free deal with Ukraine until June 2024.
During a meeting with farmers on Tuesday, Agriculture Minister Telus said he would turn again to neighbouring countries for support in an effort to force Brussels to address the matter. Formally, Poland would need to form a blocking minority to prevent the prolongation of the duty-free regime by the EU.
Agrounia, one of the main farmers’ unions, responded to Telus’s comments on Tuesday in a statement: “The new minister is sweating. He doesn’t even know if the documents about the duty-free deal were sent to Brussels or not.”
The blockade of Ukrainian imports planned to start at 10:00 am on Wednesday would go ahead despite the new minister’s promises, Agrounia added.
Source: Reporting Democracy