Brussels (Brussels Morning) – EU extends Ukraine trade deal, introduces safeguards for agriculture, aiming to address farmer concerns amidst geopolitical tensions.
European Parliament clinched a political deal on the year-long revival of a free trade project with Ukraine adding ‘emergency brakes’ for acute agricultural commodities in the aftermath of farmers’ protests. The EU temporarily stopped all tariffs and quotas on Ukraine’s agricultural exports after Russia’s full-scale aggression on Ukraine in 2022 and subsequently revitalised the suspension, which is now set to expire in June.
The trade liberalisation effort will now be extended up to 5 June 2025 if EU ministers and the EU Parliament now green light a settlement reached this morning. The automatic safeguard instrument intended to shield specific domestic sectors from expanded imports arising as a consequence of the free trade scheme was a fundamental contention in negotiations between MEPs and the Belgian presidency of the EU Council
Lawmakers decided to extend protection beyond wheat, maize, rapeseed, sunflower seeds, sugar, poultry, and eggs – originally presented by the commission in January – to also contain honey, maize, oats, and hulled grains.
In practice, the commission will be permitted to reintroduce tariff-rate allocations if imports of these commodities surpass the arithmetic mean of portions imported in 2022 and 2023. The time frame needed for the commission’s response to activate the emergency brake was also shortened from three to two weeks in case import wave.
“Russia’s targeting of Ukraine and its food production also influences EU farmers,” expressed parliament’s rapporteur Sandra Kalniete, adding that the sector’s troubles had been listened to with the supported safeguard measures.
After the political agreement, the clock is running to endorse the new measures so that they can take outcome immediately following the expiry of the earlier suspension. Parliament’s committee on international trade and EU ambassadors are both predicted to greenlight the outcome of the inter-institutional discussions as soon as today. MEPs would then convey their final go-ahead in the parliament’s latest plenary in April.
In past, The EU dropped tariffs on Ukrainian imports in 2022 in a proposal to help support the Ukrainian economy floating after Russia’s invasion disabled its farm sector. Many of Ukraine’s previous export courses, including through the Black Sea, have been stopped by warfare. However, the policy has evolved into a focus of huge protests directed by furious farmers across the bloc. Ukraine’s EU neighbours – Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – have expressed the imports have worried their markets, leading to protests by farmers and truckers.
The protesters expressed they face unfair competition because the imports are traded at lower prices and Ukrainian producers are not secured by the EU’s strict rules on environmental measures and animal welfare. Poland has been a base of particular anger with farmers blockading borders for months and dumping trainloads of Ukrainian grain.
On Wednesday, Polish farmers said they prepared more than 500 road blocking to continue their demonstration against cheap imports from Ukraine and the EU’s climate policy. Due to logistical concerns, many Ukrainian grain exports originally predestined for non-EU countries have gathered in Poland, raising the pressure on local producers.
This week, Polish farmers extended their protests to shutter the boundary with Germany. Ukraine urges that its agricultural exports being routed via Eastern Europe have not harmed EU markets. It states that a campaign to free up roads now sees about 95 per cent of the country’s farm exports once more going over the Black Sea.
Kyiv has stated it can accept an emergency brake established on 2022-2023 averages. It had insisted that a 2021 measure would have been unworkable. The concessions were approved three months before the EU Parliament elections, in which a wave of support is expected for far-right groups that have seized upon the farmers’ discontent.
