MOSCOW, September 5. /TASS/. Ukrainian grain will not be delivered to Poland after September 15 despite the desire of global corporations to firmly enter the European market with Ukrainian food, Krzysztof Ardanowski, Poland’s former agriculture minister and presidential adviser, said in an interview aired by the RMF-24 radio station.
"[Grain] will not be supplied. This is the explicit position of the prime minister and the government. It cannot be supplied," he said when asked about the consequences of lifting the European Commission-imposed embargo on supplies of grain from Ukraine to the EU after September 15. "I cannot imagine last year’s situation, meaning an inflow of grain from Ukraine that very strongly destabilized our market, happening again," he said.
Ukraine has long been eager to enter the European market with its products, the official said, adding that the process was regulated by duties and restrictions. "Ministers always decided how much Ukrainian products could be let in so as not to harm the agricultural markets of EU countries. Now they want to take advantage of Europe's current openness towards Ukraine, the desire to help,to realize what for years they have failed to do, namely firmly entering the European market with their food. This will result in the fall of small farms in Europe," Ardanowski warned.
"The Ukrainians should understand that their grain should be sent to the world’s poorest regions, not to the EU and above all not to countries bordering [Ukraine]," he stressed, noting that "these are the interests of global corporations in Ukraine who have several millions of hectares of black earth at their disposal."
"There is Russian, Chinese, American, Dutch, German capital as well as Polish investment there. A mix of capital from the whole world has been invested in agriculture in Ukraine. Those firms that have offices all around the world, including in Poland, demand approval for the supply of grain and other products grown in Ukraine to the EU, where the Ukrainian politicians connected with it in financial terms among other things, speak more for those corporations, than for the Ukrainian people," the politician pointed out.
In April, five Central European countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) banned imports of grain and other types of agricultural products from Ukraine in a move to protect the interests of their farms. Later they lifted those measures in exchange for the European Commission’s decision to impose an embargo on supplies from Ukraine of four types of grain and oil crops, including wheat, corn, rapeseed and sunflower seeds, first until June 5, and later until September 15. Currently, those countries are seeking to extend the ban, stressing that otherwise they will impose it independently.