Ukraine is ready to accept restrictions on trade with the European Union to defuse a fierce political dispute with Poland.
Source. This was stated by Taras Kachka, Deputy Minister of Economy and Trade Representative of Ukraine, in an interview with the Financial Times.
"Perhaps for such a transitional period... A managed approach to trade flows between Ukraine and the EU is what we all need," he said.
The Vice Minister of Economy stressed that he is calling on the EU to ban imports of Russian grain, which is still coming to European countries through Belarus.
Taras Kachka accused Moscow of inciting the Polish protests. He claims that Moscow is "undoubtedly" behind the scattered Ukrainian grain.
"The Russians "are involved in cases of vandalism or sabotage that can be interpreted as hostile towards Ukraine in general," he said.
"As for wheat, it is not Ukraine that creates problems for Polish farmers, but Russia," Kaczka said.
As the FT reminds, after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the EU cancelled duties on Ukrainian imports, but soon Polish farmers and farmers from other countries bordering Ukraine took to the streets and joined the border blockade to protest against unfair competition.
The Vice Minister of Economy said that Kyiv supports new measures proposed by Brussels to impose restrictions on imports of eggs, poultry and sugar from June, as well as to allow individual countries to close their markets to Ukrainian grain, except for further transit to other countries.
He acknowledged that between 2022 and 2023, Ukraine's sugar production increased from 7,000 to 500,000 tonnes. "How quickly this was done may scare everyone," he said.
Kyiv has also recently agreed to reroute corn exports to Italy and Spain via the Black Sea rather than by road through neighbouring countries to ease tensions.
"We have voluntarily suspended the permission to export corn to all five neighbouring member states. Despite this, we exported another new record of 15 million tonnes of corn in calendar 2023. So we are in great demand in other countries. Ukraine has filled the gaps in EU production," Kachka said.
Background. Earlier it was reported that the Cabinet of Ministers simplified the licensing of sunflower exports to Bulgaria. In particular, an automatic licensing regime was introduced instead of the non-automatic one.