EU Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski supported the extension of the temporary ban on the import of Ukrainian grain to five EU countries until the end of 2023 and offered to provide subsidies for Ukrainian grain exporters.
This is reported by EUobserver.
The ban, which covers Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, ends on September 15. The ban stipulated that agricultural products cannot be imported to them from Ukraine, but can be transported by transit.
Speaking before a group of MEPs from the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture, Wojciechovskyi said that the EU should consider subsidizing the cost of Ukrainian grain transit to seaports, for example, in the Baltic states. According to him, this proposal is supported by both the five EU countries and Ukraine.
"This is not the commission proposal but I hope it will be," he also said, warning that the restoration of permission for Ukrainian exports would provoke a "huge crisis" in the five member states neighboring Ukraine.
In response to the request, the European Commission confirmed that there is currently no such proposal.
The EUʼs executive body said it is currently working on increasing the capacity of the so-called "solidarity routes" and eliminating bottlenecks that have arisen in five countries due to a sharp increase in grain exports from Ukraine.
If the issue is not resolved by September 15, there is a possibility that countries such as Poland could unilaterally extend the ban, as happened in April.
The next meeting of the Joint Coordination Platform will be held on September 5.
Ukraine insists that a unilateral extension of the ban would violate the rules of the common market and the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU.