The commercial battle which has just begun is unprecedented. On the evening of Monday, September 18, Ukraine announced that it had lodged a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against Slovakia, Poland and Hungary, which imposed an embargo on the import of Ukrainian cereals. “It is fundamentally important for us to prove that member states [de l’Union européenne] cannot prohibit the import of Ukrainian products”, Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister and economy minister, assured Monday.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Brussels removed all customs duties in order to help the country evacuate its agricultural products more easily. While its ports on the Black Sea are partially blockaded by the Russian army, the Commission decided to deploy “solidarity routes”, most often land, to evacuate these foodstuffs.
However, in April, Ukrainian grain imports across Western land borders were blocked by five countries – in addition to the three already mentioned, Bulgaria and Romania. According to the authorities of these countries, the massive arrival of wheat, corn, rapeseed and even sunflower seeds has strongly destabilized the markets and had serious consequences on the income of their farmers.
After a few weeks of waiting, the Commission authorized these partial embargoes in May, and for a limited period of four months. But on Friday, Brussels announced the lifting of all restrictions. Valdis Dombrovskis, the vice-president of the Community executive responsible for trade, considered it impossible “to perpetuate exceptional safeguard measures, which by their nature must be limited in time”.
“Need for solidarity”
According to the observations of the coordination platform with the representatives of each country concerned set up by Brussels, market distortions on these agricultural products no longer exist. The Commission also announced on Friday that Ukraine would better control the volumes of grain exported via its western borders.
Despite these decisions, Warsaw, Bratislava and Budapest firmly rejected these measures and decided to maintain their embargo. Hungary has even decided to block around twenty other Ukrainian agricultural products. Faced with this decision, kyiv decided to react. “ We are taking legal action against them at the WTO. At the same time, we hope that these states will lift their restrictions”assures Mme Svyrydenko.
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