Poland, along with Hungary and Slovakia, has closed its market to Ukrainian grain imports, despite the EU-Ukraine trade agreement, and in violation of the EU’s single market rules.
Now it’s the turn of Polish truck drivers. Slovak and Hungarian truck drivers are threatening to organize similar protests. Ironically, Central European transport companies are making similar complaints to Western European trucking companies – which complained bitterly of being undermined when those countries joined the EU.
The farmers joined truck drivers, who on Monday launched a 24-hour blockade of the Medica border crossing in southeastern Poland.
The Ukrainians are “biting the hand we extended to them,” agricultural protest organizer Roman Kondro told the Polish News Agency.
Volodymyr Balin, Vice President of the International Federation of Motor Transport Companies, said at a press conference in Kiev that the protests had cost the Ukrainian economy more than 400 million euros.
I think our mistake was relying on Poland too much. We have moved our business, and we pay the taxes and logistics fees that we used to pay in Ukraine to Poland now. “We thought we had our backs covered,” Medtechnika’s Davydenko said. “Maybe if we were a little more careful, we wouldn’t depend on Poland so much.”
Veronika Melkozerova reported from Kyiv.
