In a joint letter, the Hungarian, Polish, Slovak and Romanian prime ministers and the Bulgarian president asked Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that the European Commission immediately take measures to deal with the unsustainable situation caused by increased grain imports from Ukraine, announced Agriculture Minister István Nagy. .
According to the statement of the Ministry of Agriculture (AM) on Saturday, the head of the ministry explained that the increased energy prices and input costs due to the Russian-Ukrainian war and the failed Brussels sanctions in response to it are also affecting European farmers very seriously.
Ukrainian agriculture is fully exempt from customs duties.
In the member states bordering Ukraine, including Hungary, all of this is compounded by unprecedented amounts of grain and oilseed imports that remain in these countries. In addition, Ukrainian agriculture, which enjoys full duty-free status, has begun to export large quantities of poultry, eggs and honey to the European market, which displaces Hungarian products from its traditional markets and lowers farmers' sales prices below the level of production costs, István Nagy emphasized.
He added: seeing the helplessness of Brussels, the heads of state and government in Eastern Europe are asking the President of the European Commission to immediately develop a complex set of measures in their letter on Friday, which includes immediate help for the affected farmers and treatment of the root causes.
The minister also touched on the fact that in order to immediately help farmers who are having sales problems due to Ukrainian imports, they are calling for an increase in the amounts that can be used for extraordinary support by involving additional funds, because it is clear that the resources that can be used for this purpose within the framework of the Common Agricultural Policy and the national budgets cannot solve the situation management.
Also, in order to deal with the situation in the short term, the Commission is asked to examine the possibility of the EU buying up for humanitarian purposes the stored grain grown in the bordering member states and unsalable due to the price drop caused by imports.
In the area of trade policy, it is recommended that if the market disruptions caused by imports cannot be avoided in any other way, then the Commission should take steps to reduce customs duties and customs quotas, the announcement states.
István Nagy emphasized that the Hungarian government trusts that the European Commission will not forget Eastern European farmers when helping Ukraine, as it is neither expected nor fair that the price of the common solidarity provided by the 27 EU member states towards Ukraine should be paid by the bordering member states for agriculture. should be paid by its producers.
It must be avoided that the same thing happens as in the case of sanctions, that is, that the EU causes more damage to itself and its agricultural producers than the amount of help that the duty-free admission of agricultural products by land means to Ukraine, said István Nagy, according to the statement of the AM.
Source: MTI
