Poland wants EU to pay for Ukrainian grain transit
Polish agriculture minister Robert Telus has said that Warsaw and Ukraine’s other EU neighbours were counting Brussels’ subsidies for Ukrainian grain transit as Kyiv challenges their unilateral bans on its agricultural imports.
"We, as a coalition of five countries, support the proposal of the EU agriculture commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski that the EU should subsidise grain transportation to make it profitable," Mr Telus told Polish radio on Friday.
"Ukraine and business would like to simply export grain across the Polish-Ukrainian border and come back, fill Poland with grain and be done with it."
The Polish official added that he plans to discuss the issue with Ukrainian agriculture minister Mykola Solsky during a meeting, likely next week.
"I told Minister Solsky that we need to work together to create mechanisms to ensure that grain and other products go where they are supposed to go, i.e. where they were going before the war in Ukraine," Mr Telus added.
He stressed that EU ‘Solidarity Lanes’, land routes designed to expedite Ukraine’s agricultural exports, continue to work, with over 260,00 tonnes of grain shipped through Poland in June alone.
"If we are talking about overland exports through all five countries, before the solidarity corridors started working, the average export from Ukraine was 2.9 million tonnes of grain, and after the introduction of bans and transit permits, it was 3.4 million tonnes," the Polish minister said.
Poland is one of the three EU countries that have unilaterally extended the ban on exports of Ukrainian agricultural products despite the European Commission's decision.
Earlier this week, Ukraine filed lawsuits at the World Trade Organization against Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary, after they banned the import of Ukrainian agricultural products.
