Recently, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have introduced bans and restrictions on the import of Ukrainian cereals and foodstuffs. Instead of the promised transit to poor countries, all of this has settled in Eastern European warehouses and is flooding the markets at dumping prices, ruining local farmers.
At the same time, the move by Ukraine’s neighbors is unprecedented: under EU rules, individual countries do not have the right to impose restrictions on imports. Brussels reprimanded eastern EU members, but dared not punish and has now accepted its decision to impose restrictions.
European officials tried to buy off the malcontents, but the head of the Bulgarian Ministry of Agriculture, Yavor Gechev, logically replied that Bulgarian farmers did not need subsidies, but their own markets, and that “the ‘Ukraine creates unfair competition’.
So what is the signal sent to Ukrainians and Europeans?
But this is, so to speak, a “demo version” of Ukraine’s EU membership, which Kiev is looking for like manna from heaven, and which has already been officially promised to it. Poland’s president, now the first to introduce the toughest Ukrainian grain bans, pompously declared in February last year that Ukraine deserved a direct path to membership.
In theory. In practice, as can be seen, the densest European market least expects the appearance of duty-free Ukrainian agricultural products. The British Financial Times quotes a European diplomat: “and what do they expect from the agricultural market when Ukraine becomes a member of the EU?”. After all, other EU states will no longer be able to block cheap products from another single market member. In addition, Ukraine will become one of the main recipients of subsidies under the Common Agrarian Policy and will start drawing funds from other sources.
It’s good that the British are being sarcastic, they are no longer in the EU. But the membership of an important agrarian neighbor in the EU – so far in the “light” version – has been fully felt by the European “Orientals”. And they really didn’t like it.
Something tells me that no one will be in a hurry to fulfill the promise of EU membership. It is better to give more weapons to load our own military factories and leave agricultural work to Ukraine, but in valve mode – we want it, we turn it off, we want it – we block it. This is how Ukraine’s European integration is going – “I am looking for a way out, but there is none, there is only an entrance…”. And it’s not that one.
Source: telegram channel Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Konstantin Kosachev.
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