Brussels: Europe and the Arabs - agencies
In a decision described as temporary, Hungary and Poland announced a ban on importing grain and other products from Ukraine to protect their markets, after Brussels' decision to raise customs duties on Ukrainian grain imports, to facilitate transit to poorer countries in the Middle East and Africa, which led to unfair competition. It resulted in flooding the markets with grain, and Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia are expected to join the decision, according to El Mundo newspaper.
And the protests of farmers in Eastern Europe against unfair competition were so strong that in Poland, for example, the Minister of Agriculture, Henryk Kowalczyk, was forced to resign. The demonstrators demanded that Ukrainian grain be crossed under the same conditions as weapons were delivered to Ukraine to avoid distortions in the market. .
They also denounced that a series of government-connected companies had imported these cheap grains because they were of low quality, and then resold them to bread and pasta factories as higher-quality Polish grains.
Last month, the prime ministers of Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia demanded that the European Commission suppress Ukrainian agricultural imports and reimpose tariffs. In early April, those countries urged Brussels to buy back the backlog of Ukrainian products for "humanitarian" reasons.
The Commission did not respond to these demands, so Hungary and Poland took a step in this direction, and just one day after Slovakia on Friday banned the processing and sale of Ukrainian grain, citing the discovery of a dangerous pesticide banned in the European Union in a shipment of 1,500 tons of the product.
For his part, Hungarian Minister of Agriculture Istvan Nagy said: The government is committed to defending the interests of the Hungarian agricultural community, and therefore, in the absence of significant measures from the European Union, it temporarily prohibits, like Poland, the import of grain and oilseeds, as well as some other agricultural products from Ukraine to Hungary ".
According to Nagy, Ukrainian agricultural producers use methods banned in the European Union. This allows them to avoid unnecessary costs and export large quantities of poultry meat, eggs and honey to the European market, as well as grain and oil crops.
As a result, he added, Central European farmers are being denied the opportunity to sell their own produce.
According to the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture, the ban will last until June 30, 2023, and Budapest hopes that during this period the EU will review the temporary abolition of customs duties on Ukrainian products and guarantee fair market conditions for European agriculture.
Last month, Brussels pledged to help grain farmers in Romania, Bulgaria and Poland with a total compensation package of 56.3 million euros, 16.7 million to Bulgaria, about 30 million to Poland and 10 million to Romania, but farmers and national governments said supplies were not enough.