Kiev protests in Brussels and Warsaw against restrictions on Ukrainian wheat imports
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kiev announced today that it has sent protest notes to Poland and the European Union, considering that the limitation of Ukrainian wheat imports is "categorically unacceptable", reports Reuters, quoted by Digi24. However, the Foreign Minister of Ukraine welcomed the agreement announced on Friday by the European Commission.
"Such restrictions, no matter how justified, do not respect the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU, nor the principles and rules of the European single market," claims the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kyiv.
"There are full legal reasons for the immediate resumption of exports of Ukrainian agricultural products to Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria, as well as for the continuation of unrestricted exports to other EU member states," reads the document, quoted by Agerpres.
The European Commission announced on Friday that it had reached an agreement with the five countries, four of which had limited some agricultural imports from Ukraine on the grounds that they were disrupting domestic markets. Romania also complained about the effects of the influx of cheap Ukrainian grain.
"We have acted to respond to the concern of farmers both in neighboring European states and in Ukraine," European Commissioner for Economy Valdis Dombrovskis, vice-president of the Commission, wrote on Twitter.
He announced that Poland, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary would withdraw the measures taken, and for wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower the Commission would instead apply "exceptional safeguard measures".
The announced agreement could limit the entry of the respective products from Ukraine to the quantities intended for transit. Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marcenko praised the deal on Saturday. Present in Stockholm at a meeting of his EU counterparts, he said that blocking imports would not only harm his country but cause terrible suffering in the Middle East and Africa.
