Source: AFP
Polish farmers staged blockades at border checkpoints with Ukraine on Friday to protest competition from its neighbor as Warsaw hinted it could impose new import bans on Ukrainian agricultural products.
Farmers protested in more than 250 locations across Poland, blocking highways and snarling traffic with columns of slow-moving tractors converging on major cities.
“We have no choice,” Marcin Wilgos, an organizer of the demonstration in Dorohusk on the border with Ukraine, told AFP, next to a banner calling for the European Union to ban Ukrainian grain and sugar.
The protests come shortly after Polish truckers staged a two-month blockade of major border crossings to demand the reinstatement of EU entry restrictions on their Ukrainian competitors.
The carriers suspended the blockade until March, but warned they would return to the border if their demands were not met.
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Poland has been among Ukraine’s staunchest supporters during Russia’s nearly two-year invasion, but friction over grain import restrictions imposed by Poland and four other EU countries in June has further strained ties between allies.
Polish Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Siekierski said on state radio on Friday that “complete” import bans could be imposed on other product groups as well.
“It may be needed for sugar if the inflow is too large. It may be needed for poultry,” Siekierski said, adding that the government intends to raise the issue in talks with Kiev.
Asked about the protests, Siekierski said farmers had “reasonable expectations and demands” to curb imports from Ukraine, which they say are unfairly lowering prices.
Siekieski also said he plans to meet with protest organizers later Friday before hosting them at the ministry next week.
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“Immense weight”
The protest, called by Poland’s main farming union, is expected to continue for a month, part of growing discontent among farmers across Europe over falling prices across the continent.
European farmers say competition has hit their profits because Ukrainian producers are not bound by EU rules such as animal welfare.
“The excess of products from Ukraine, produced not according to EU standards and procedures, is a huge burden for us,” said Wilgos.
The EU-sanctioned ban on grain imports from the five countries expired in September, when the previous populist Law and Justice (PiS) party still ruled Poland.
However, the ban was extended and maintained even after the new pro-EU coalition government came to power following Polish elections in October.
However, Polish officials have urged the resignation of EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, a Polish national who won the post with the support of PiS.
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On Friday, powerful PiS president Jaroslaw Kaczynski unexpectedly joined the calls, saying he would ask Wojciechowski to “terminate his mission” while acknowledging he had “no influence” on whether he continues in the post.
Source: AFP