Poland wants to introduce protective mechanisms against Ukrainian products

In light of the European Commission's rejection of Poland's demand to impose duties on Ukrainian agricultural products, Warsaw wants to introduce regional mechanisms to protect against the influx of Ukrainian goods.

Polish Agriculture Minister Czesław Siekierski said this in a commentary to Business Insider, Ukrinform reports.

According to the minister, the European Commission is preparing a draft regulation to extend duty-free trade with Ukraine until June 2025. Therefore, the Polish Ministry of Agriculture is putting forward its demands to amend the provisions of this regulation, which will provide for the acceleration of the implementation of protective mechanisms at the regional level if the market problem does not affect the entire EU but a particular member state or region.

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In his words, the Polish side wants to protect itself from the negative consequences of the influx of agricultural goods from Ukraine to the Polish market. He emphasized that Poland is holding internal consultations on the introduction of licenses for the export of agricultural goods proposed by the Ukrainian side.

After talks with the Minister of Agriculture of Ukraine Mykola Solskyi, it was jointly agreed that technical groups would be set up to develop, among other things, a framework within which trade between Poland and Ukraine should be regulated, Siekierski stated.

The Polish minister also said that Warsaw has the political will to develop infrastructure that will facilitate the transit of Ukrainian goods to third countries. According to him, Poland will work to develop port infrastructure.

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Unfortunately, little has been done in this area in the past. Therefore, to optimize and improve the transit opportunities for agricultural products from Ukraine, it will be necessary to cooperate with other ministries to develop port, railway and warehouse infrastructure, the Polish minister emphasized.

As Ukrinform reported, in early January, European Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski threatened to block the European Commission's decision to extend the free trade agreement with Ukraine for 2024-2025 if it did not take into account his proposals for trade restrictions for Kyiv.