Negotiators from the EU Council and the European Parliament agreed in Brussels that EU tariffs on large quantities of certain Ukrainian agricultural products are to be reintroduced.

According to the parliament, this specifically concerns eggs, poultry, sugar, maize, oats, groats, and honey.

In the future, there will be a certain quota of these goods that can be sold duty-free in the EU.

Once this quantity has been reached, customs duties would come into force again.

For the time being, the suspension of customs duties would continue to apply to wheat imports, although it would be possible to take measures under certain conditions.

According to the provisional agreement, these rules would apply until June 2025.

The EU lifted tariffs on Ukrainian agricultural exports in 2022 in a solidarity move to support the Ukrainian economy after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The bloc originally planned to extend the suspension, meant to expire in June 2024, until 2025, despite the major controversy surrounding grain exports, among other goods, from Ukraine to the EU.

The extension had built-in safeguards based on tariffs to appease protesting EU farmers angry about the market disruption caused by the Ukrainian exports.

EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said at the time the suspension “strikes the right balance” between supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion and protecting EU farmers’ interests.

According to the European Commission, the tariffs are calculated based on the major increase in Ukraine’s exports between 2022 and 2023.

While EU tariffs were first lifted in 2022 in solidarity with Ukraine, controls were imposed on Ukrainian grain products exported to Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Romania following protests from farmers in the domestic agricultural industry.

These controls were eventually lifted in September 2023. However, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia have introduced import bans of their own. 

(dpa/NAN)