EU worried about massive import of Ukrainian grains, oilseeds – European Commissioner

Source

APK-Inform

2015

"Solidarity lanes" created by the EU on the borders with Ukraine allowed agricultural export from Ukraine to be unblocked, but created problems for local farmers, especially in border countries, who began to face difficulties while selling their own products. This prompts the European Commission to look for a way to protect European producers, said European Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski during a press conference following the results of the EU Council of Ministers on Agriculture, Ukrinform reports.

"The solidarity lanes initiative was very successful. At the beginning of the Russian aggression, import from Ukraine were almost completely blocked and amounted to no more than 200 thsd tonnes of agricultural goods per month. Now we have a significant increase in import to the EU from Ukraine if we compare 2021-2022", – the European Commissioner noted.

For example, grain import from Ukraine to the EU amounted to 287 thsd tonnes in 2021, this figure increased to 2.849 mln tonnes in 2022. Particularly, before the war, 7.309 mln tonnes of corn were delivered from Ukraine to the EU, this volume increased to 12.012 mln tonnes in 2022. The same for rapeseed and sunflower seed. Before the war, the EU imported 25 thsd tonnes of sunflower seed, and in 2022, the indicator increased to 1.855 mln tonnes.

According to the European Commissioner, this created certain problems in the border countries. For example, the import of Ukrainian sunflower seed to Bulgaria increased from about 3 thsd tonnes in 2021 to 892 thsd tonnes in 2022. The huge volume of growth of Ukrainian export of wheat, rapeseed, corn and other crops is observed in such countries as Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia.

"This is not a problem for the entire European Union. Somewhere we see an increase in import, in other places it decreased. But this is a regional problem, a problem for border countries. On the one hand, this is the success of the "solidarity lanes". On the other hand, we need to solve the problems of local farmers, who are currently facing difficulties in selling their own products", – J. Wojciechowski noted.

At the same time, according to him, during the discussion, none of the member countries put forward initiatives to reduce or create any barriers for Ukrainian agricultural export. At the same time, EU countries began to look for ways to support European farmers in this emergency situation.

"A possible tool is to use the EU crisis reserve to support farmers. Not all member states supported such a proposal, but most of them were not against it. This is exactly the reason why we will give very serious consideration to the possibility of using the crisis reserve for farmers in trouble. We will analyze this situation, and I will submit this proposal for consideration to the Board of the European Commission", – the European Commissioner emphasized.
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