Almost nothing comes out of Ukraine anymore.
Polish farmers blocked border crossings and many roads across the country on Friday to protest competition from its neighbor, as Warsaw plans to impose new bans on the import of Ukrainian agricultural products.
Farmers demonstrated at more than 250 sites across Poland, blocking traffic with their columns of tractors converging at slow speed towards major cities.
“We have no other choice,” said Marcin Wilgos, organizer of the protest in Dorohusk, on the border with Ukraine, next to a banner calling on the EU to ban Ukrainian grain and sugar .
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Poland has been among Ukraine's biggest supporters since Russia's aggression against that country, but friction over Warsaw's unilateral ban on grain imports has damaged relations between the allies.
Polish Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Siekierski told public radio on Friday that “total” import bans may be necessary for new product groups.
“This could be necessary for sugar, if its influx is too great, for poultry,” he said, adding that the government intended to raise the issue in discussions with kyiv.
“Legitimate expectations and demands”
According to him, farmers had “legitimate expectations and demands” to limit excessive imports from Ukraine.
Czeslaw Siekierski also said he planned to meet protest organizers later today, before welcoming them to the ministry next week.
The Polish protests, organized at the call of the main agricultural union, are expected to continue for a whole month.
They are part of the growing discontent among European farmers over the collapse of prices across the continent.
European farmers complain about competition from Ukrainian producers, which weighs on their income and which they find unfair, as Ukraine is not subject to European Union rules, particularly in terms of animal welfare.
“The overabundance of products from Ukraine, produced without respecting EU standards and procedures, is a huge burden for us,” said a 40-year-old farmer protesting in Dorohusk.
Poland banned imports of Ukrainian grain under the previous nationalist government but maintained the ban after a new pro-EU coalition came to power in October.
Resignation of European commissioner requested
In the context of the demonstrations, the existing Polish authorities demanded the resignation of the European Commissioner for Agriculture, the Pole Janusz Wojciechowski, appointed to this post by their predecessors from the populist nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party.
“There is a man in Europe who brought together all the European and Polish farmers against his reform.
This is Janusz Wojciechowski.
Resignation,” Polish Deputy Prime Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz told parliament.
On Friday, the powerful PiS president, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, unexpectedly joined these calls, declaring that he would ask Janusz Wojciechowski to "end his mission", before admitting that he had "no influence” on its decisions.