The EU may allow restrictions on the import of Ukrainian products to Ukraineʼs neighboring countries

The European Commission plans to offer additional guarantees to Ukraineʼs neighboring countries regarding restrictions on the export of Ukrainian food.

The Financial Times writes about it.

Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said a proposal is due this week and is likely to include "country-specific safeguards". That is, Brussels will be able to block imports if the market of any country is "flooded".

"We will look at how we can provide additional guarantees to Poland and other EU member states, and one of the ways to do this is to introduce safeguard measures for each country," Valdis Dombrovskis added.

According to him, neighboring countries feel the biggest impact from Ukrainian agricultural products, while there are no significant obstacles for the EU market.

Poland and Hungary introduced a unilateral ban on the import of Ukrainian products in April 2023. This happened against the background of protests by farmers who claimed that cheap exports from Ukraine allegedly led to a surplus of grain on the domestic market. The unilateral ban was against general EU trade law.

And what is the problem?

After the start of the full-scale war, the European Union canceled all tariffs and quotas for the transit of Ukrainian grain. Farmers from Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovakia lost hundreds of millions of euros due to the influx of Ukrainian grain into their markets. Then countries began to ban the import of Ukrainian grain, and the European Commission allocated funds to European farmers.

From May 2 until September 15, 2023, the European Commission officially banned the import of wheat, corn, rapeseed and sunflower seeds from Ukraine to Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. At the same time, the transit of Ukrainian products through their territory remained.

On July 17, 2023, Russia announced its withdrawal from the "grain agreement". Already on July 19, Russian troops attacked the port infrastructure of Odesa and the region, targeting grain and oil terminals. After that, Russia began systematically shelling Ukraineʼs grain infrastructure. This happens all the time. Last August, Ukraine announced temporary sea corridors for merchant ships, and then began attacking Russian ships. In January 2024, the spokesman of the Navy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Dmytro Pletenchuk, stated that the "grain corridor" in the Black Sea reached pre-war levels.

• Recently, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary demanded that the European Union impose import duties on grain from Ukraine. The European Commission refused them, but plans to propose new trade measures for Ukraine next week.