The agrarian chambers of the Visegrad countries protest against the duty-free import of Ukrainian grain

By: STA Date: 2023. 04. 25. 10:15

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The agrarian chambers of the four Visegrad countries call on the European Commission to stop the duty-free import of Ukrainian grain into the European Union, Jan Dolezal, the president of the Czech Agrarian Chamber, announced at the press conference after the meeting of the representatives of the four chambers on Tuesday in Brno, South Moravia.

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According to the report of the CTK news agency, Jan Dolezal said that the Czech, Polish, Hungarian and Slovak Chambers of Agriculture will send a joint letter to Brussels in the near future to take measures to solve the problem. The Ukrainian grain that flows into Central and Eastern European countries duty-free causes problems for local producers, who are therefore unable to sell their own grain, he pointed out. “If the European Commission does not respond to our request in time, we are ready to go to Brussels and protest there,” emphasized the representative of the Czech Chamber of Agriculture.

The Czech Republic’s grain reserves currently stand at 2.6 million tons, which is 40 percent more than in the same period last year

“Czech producers cannot sell their grain. Their traditional customers, the Germans and the Poles, do not want to buy anything, because their market is saturated with Ukrainian grain,” he pointed out. According to Jan Dolezal, it is currently practically impossible to determine exactly how much Ukrainian grain and other agricultural products have arrived in the EU without any kind of control.

The representatives of the agricultural chambers of the four Visegrad countries signed a memorandum in Brno on Tuesday, in which, in addition to the appeal to Brussels, they also express their solidarity with Ukraine. The agricultural chambers propose to help Ukrainian farmers with the revenues from the customs duty imposed on Ukrainian grain imports.

MTI