Former top EU official: Polish farmers, stop blaming Kyiv and Brussels for low prices

The way out of the ongoing crisis of food imports is through the EU and its safeguards and not via the “populist” game of blaming it on Ukraine or Brussels, Poland’s former deputy minister of agriculture and director general at the European Commission, Jerzy Plewa, told Euractiv in an interview.

For months now, Polish farmers have been protesting against the excessive influx of food commodities imported from Ukraine via the EU solidarity lanes. The current low level of cereal prices at the global and EU level is further worsening the situation.

“Low grain prices on global markets are largely due to Russia’s record exports, which are being sold at low prices particularly to African markets, but also to Europe”, but the approach of protests in Poland is “that the problem is only Ukraine and Brussels”, Plewa said.

The former (2013-19) director general for agriculture at the Commission is now back in Poland and collaborating with the Team Europe Direct communication initiative. 

In the conversation with Euractiv he pointed the finger at the “pseudo-leaders” of the protests, who are “using anti-European and anti-Ukrainian slogans” while concealing the national responsibilities, especially of the previous nationalist government, in the crisis.

Plewa recalled that when solidarity lanes opened and import tariffs from Kyiv were suspended for the first time in 2022, “there was quite a substantial increase of import to Poland, especially cereals and wheat”. 

At that time, however, grains prices were high and the “former prime minister and the minister of agriculture suggested on many occasions and publicly that farmers stock cereals because the prices would increase”, he added.

The result is “a lot of surplus, unsold today” in the Polish silos, Plewa underlined, which is putting further pressure on prices.

“I do not underestimate the difficult situation of the farmers, especially the medium sized farms, and the impact of Ukrainian imports”, but the current trend of cereals price in Poland is “also correlated with the prices at the European and global level”, the former negotiator (1998-2003) for Poland’s accession to the EU told Euractiv.

The way out of the crisis, according to Plewa, is the EU proposal for a renewal of trade benefits for Ukraine, “introducing a special safeguard clause, which will be much more efficient, in case the import volumes go beyond certain safety thresholds”.

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In the face of growing protests by farmers, the European Commission officially proposed on Wednesday (31 January) introducing safeguard measures to cap Ukrainian food imports and accepted France’s proposal for a partial derogation from the fallow-land obligations for farmers.

The national side of the ‘green’ red tape 

In Poland, as in other parts of the EU, farmers took to the street also against the Green Deal and the administrative burden of the agricultural policy, but Plewa was not impressed by the protests in his country.

The paradox is that the leader of the protesting group ‘Rural Solidarity’ “is among the top net beneficiaries” of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in Poland “and he is an organic farmer, so he benefits from the full support offered by the CAP and the Green Deal”, Plewa stated.

The EU ministers met last week to discuss measures for the simplification of the CAP, with little space in the debate for the national implementation of the 2021 reform of the policy.

That reform, recalled Plewa, who was one of the main players of the initial proposal to renew the CAP in 2018, gave member states unprecedented powers in the implementation of the policy on the ground, through Strategic national plans. 

“More power has been given to member states, but also more responsibility. Often they use the power but do not take the responsibility”, Plewa concluded.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

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