Hungary and Poland extended embargo on agricultural products from Ukraine despite new agreement with the EU

The Hungarian government does not plan to lift the ban on imports of Ukrainian agricultural products after the entry into force of the updated trade agreement between the European Union and Ukraine. This was stated by the Minister of Agriculture of Hungary István Nagy.

According to him, “EU bureaucrats are not at all interested in what will happen to the EU, in particular, to Hungarian farmers, because they subordinate everything to Ukrainian interests.”

He added that “a free trade agreement concluded with a country at war also raises serious questions.” In particular, the Hungarian minister was outraged by the increase in quotas for duty-free exports of a number of Ukrainian goods to the EU in the updated agreement.

“These issues affect our daily lives, but these are not the questions they are asking, they are more interested in how to make Ukraine more capable of exporting to the European Union,” Nagy noted.

The Hungarian minister stressed that the government protects Hungarian farmers and unilaterally keeps the border closed to Ukrainian agricultural products.

At the same time, the Polish Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development announced that it will not lift the indefinite ban on the import of wheat, corn, rapeseed and sunflower seeds from Ukraine in view of the entry into force of the updated trade agreement between the EU and Ukraine.

“The new quotas and volumes established in connection with the entry into force of the trade agreement between Ukraine and the EU apply to imports of goods into the entire EU, while in Poland, as before, an indefinite ban on the import of wheat, corn, rapeseed and sunflower seeds from Ukraine is still in force. In connection with false information, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy confirms that the new agreement does not change the above-mentioned rules,” the Polish ministry emphasized.

The department believes that the new agreement does not contain all the provisions proposed by Poland, which should minimize the potential negative impact of Ukrainian imports on Polish agriculture.

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