Sugar beet producers called on the new Minister of Agriculture of Poland, Czeslaw Sekierski, to ban sugar supplies from Ukraine.
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“Poland needs to immediately introduce an embargo on sugar imports from Ukraine,” the National Association of Sugar Beet Producers said.
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In addition, the organization asked the minister to take “measures that will lead the EU to abandon the rules allowing unrestricted access to the EU market for sugar from Ukraine” and restore the original quota of 20,070 tons.
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The organization opposes the extension of EU decisions allowing duty-free and unlimited import of agricultural products from Ukraine.
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“This season we will produce approximately 2.3 million tons of sugar in Poland. The question arises by how many hundreds of thousands of tons we will have to reduce sugar production next year if sugar imports from Ukraine are constantly growing,” the association emphasized.
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After the temporary suspension of customs duties and quotas on the import of Ukrainian agricultural products, the import of sugar from Ukraine to the EU increased several dozen times. The most vulnerable are the border countries, where most of the Ukrainian sugar imported into the EU remains. This puts Polish industry and agriculture in a less competitive position compared to Western European partners.
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“A decrease in sugar prices was recorded in Poland and other countries bordering Ukraine,” the report indicated.
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Recently, Polish-Ukrainian relations have become significantly more complicated due to the embargo on Ukrainian grain. On September 15, the European Commission decided not to extend restrictions on the import of four types of agricultural products into several EU border countries, but obliged Kiev to introduce export control measures. After this, the authorities of Slovakia, Hungary and Poland announced that they were extending the ban unilaterally. In this regard, Ukraine filed a complaint with the WTO. In response, three EU countries announced that they would boycott meetings of the coordination platform.
