Polish farmers held a traffic-slowing protest action

(Photo: Pixabay)

During the day, farmers used tractors and other agricultural machines to slow down road traffic at around 250 locations throughout the country. “Polish agriculture is being destroyed by the green agreement and the bureaucratic procedures imposed on us by the European Union,” Tomasz Obszanski, president of the agricultural department of the Solidarity trade union, told Polsat News. “Cereals and other agricultural products flowing in duty-free from Ukraine contribute to this,” he added. Polish agriculture cannot be profitable without its own processing industry and adequate volume of trade, and fuel subsidies for farmers are also low, Obszanski said.

Minister of Agriculture Czeslaw Siekierski met the protesters near the town of Plock in Masovian Voivodeship

He said: the government wants the EU to introduce significant restrictions for Ukraine in the case of “sensitive products”, including cereals, sugar, poultry, eggs, and berries. “Ukrainian products are flooding not only the Polish market, but also the European one. This has caused protests in other European countries as well,” Siekierski pointed out. He added that the European farmers’ action “represents a message, even a protest and a demand” to the EU bodies to “reexamine the degree of openness of the market”. Speaking about the “excessive bureaucratization” of the system of so-called eco-schemes related to the EU’s green transition, Siekerski said: the fulfillment of this requirement requires changes at the EU level, which takes time. “I would like to ask the farmers for this time,” added the minister.

MTI