EU prepares to extend duty-free trade with Ukraine until June 2025, Poland wants to make changes - Minister
Kyiv • UNN
The European Commission is reportedly preparing a draft decision to extend duty-free trade with Ukraine until June 2025, despite calls from some member states to reintroduce duties.
The European Commission is preparing a draft decision to extend duty-free trade with Ukraine until June 2025, Polish Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Siekerski said in an interview with Business Insider, UNN reports.
Thus, Brussels rejected the proposals of countries that called for a return to duties, the publication points out.
In the near future, I will talk to European Commissioner for Trade Valdis Dombrovskis about the current situation with excessive imports of agricultural goods from Ukraine, as well as about the draft and amendments to the EU regulation extending duty-free trade with Ukraine until June 2025 (so-called autonomous trade measures). In addition, on the occasion of the Grune Woche trade fair, which starts on January 18 in Berlin, I will also hold talks with ministers from other countries on the import of Ukrainian goods to Poland and the EU
In the current situation, the Polish Ministry would like to introduce a mechanism that would protect Polish farmers.
"As I have already mentioned, the European Commission is currently preparing a draft resolution to extend duty-free trade with Ukraine until June 2025. Therefore, the Ministry of Agriculture is putting forward its demands to change the provisions in the resolution, among others: to speed up the procedures for safeguard provisions, including the possibility of applying regional safeguard measures - if the market problem affects not the entire EU, but a separate member state or region," Sekersky said.
At the same time, the Polish minister pointed out that the first results of the Polish-Ukrainian negotiations are already visible.
"In the current difficult situation, we want to develop an acceptable way for all participants to protect against the negative consequences of imports of agricultural products from Ukraine. We are analyzing and conducting internal consultations on, among other things, the mechanism of licensing agricultural exports to Poland proposed by the Ukrainian side," the Minister said.
In his opinion, such a decision, "with appropriate support from the European Commission," could be acceptable.
Special groups will help with this. "After talks with the Minister of Agrarian Policy of Ukraine Mykola Solsky, we jointly agreed that technical groups would be set up to, among other things, develop a framework within which trade between Poland and Ukraine should be regulated," he said.
