Ukrainian honey may once again enter the EU with customs duties

By: Trademagazin Date: 2024. 08. 09. 09:50

The amount of honey imported from Ukraine exceeded the EU quota of more than 44,000 tons stipulated in the autonomous trade liberalization measures, so the European Commission has two weeks to start the process, as a result of which honey can once again be imported from Ukraine to the European Union only upon payment of customs duties. For Hungarian beekeeping, which exports 10,000 to 20,000 tons of honey to Western Europe every year, it is a key issue to improve our market opportunities there, as the extremely low-priced honey arriving there from outside Europe has narrowed the sales opportunities on the foreign market and depressed domestic prices.

At the beginning of June, the EU measures that extended the import of Ukrainian products to the EU without customs duties and quantitative restrictions by one year until June 5, 2025 came into force. The so-called autonomous trade measure (ATM) provides access to the EU market for the Ukrainian economy, at the same time, for the decisive action of the European agricultural sector, the European Commission introduced an emergency braking mechanism for particularly sensitive agricultural products, namely poultry, eggs, sugar, oats, for wheat, corn and honey. If the import of these products exceeds the average of the import volumes recorded in the second half of 2021 and the whole of 2022 and 2023, duties may be reimposed on honey products arriving above this volume quota. The European Commission determined the amount of honey that can be imported from Ukraine at a reduced rate of 0% duty at 44.4 thousand tons. 17.3% duty is charged on items after the quota has been filled. So far, the emergency brake mechanism has been applied to oats, eggs and sugar.

Last year, 30% of the 163,000 tonnes of honey imported into the Union from third countries came from Ukraine, and more than half of this honey came to Germany, Poland and France. On the Western European markets, high-quality Hungarian honey has to compete with this price. It is extremely important to keep the interests of consumers in mind, in this regard the EU honey labeling rules are changing at the initiative of our country, therefore, from 2026 at the latest, all the countries of origin must be indicated on the packaging of honey mixtures everywhere in the EU with percentages indicated.