Negotiations with Ukraine on food imports have been difficult, Polish Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Sekerski said Wednesday ahead of a meeting Wednesday that Warsaw hopes will help ease farmers' protests, and senior Polish lawmaker Krzysztof Paszyk said a deal could be close, Reuters reports, UNN writes.
Details
Polish Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Sekerski will meet with his Ukrainian counterpart Mykola Solsky in Warsaw on Wednesday, and the two governments are to meet on Thursday.
"Many bilateral talks have been held with Ukraine - they were difficult negotiations," Sekerski was quoted as saying by the state news agency PAP.
He said that Ukraine wants to maintain a liberal approach to trade, while Poland believes that things like humanitarian and military aid should be considered separately from food exports to protect the livelihoods of farmers in Central and Eastern Europe.
He said that negotiations on the export licensing system are ongoing, but there are disagreements over the range of products to be covered.
This month, the European Union reached a preliminary agreement to grant Ukrainian food producers duty-free access to its markets until June 2025, albeit with new restrictions on grain imports, the publication notes.
Earlier on Wednesday, Krzysztof Paszyk, leader of the parliamentary group of the agrarian Polish Peasant Party (PSL), to which Sekerski also belongs, reportedly "expressed an optimistic tone about the talks.
"We are close to jointly solving these problems in a dialog," he said. - "I think that today and tomorrow it will be possible to make what is sometimes called transit, actually transit... I am optimistic about the results.
AddendumAddendum
Farmers in Poland are protesting to demand the reinstatement of customs duties on agricultural imports from Ukraine, which were abolished after Russia's invasion in 2022, the newspaper reports. They reportedly claim that Ukrainian farmers are flooding Europe with cheap imports, leaving them unable to compete.