Parliament committee considers more safeguards in trade liberalisation with Ukraine

The European Parliament Trade Committee will vote tomorrow (7 March) on whether to add new limits on trade benefits with Kyiv to appease EU farmers, or approve the new rules without any changes to speed up their adoption to help the country in the ongoing war.

The approval is urgent given the approaching end of the legislature and the Council already giving its green light with no amendments. 

The European Parliament rapporteur, Sandra Kalniete of the EPP, suggested to colleagues to follow the Council and do the same.

But MEPs from almost all the political families, EPP included, proposed modifications that could stretch the legislative process. 

The 51 amendments tabled by the various political groups, except Renew, follow national sensitivities in the Eastern European countries, and the Agricultural Committee MEPs.

On 26 February, they adopted an opinion to extend the number of sectors protected against excessive imports and to relate the threshold for activating some of them to pre-war trade volumes.

The political groups, anyway, are not questioning the approval of the proposal by tomorrow. 

Despite a group of EPP members in the Trade committee proposed changes, the group stated that it “supports the further suspension of import duties and quotas on Ukrainian exports to the EU while reinforcing the safeguards, […] for sensitive agricultural products […] supporting Ukraine while protecting our farmers at the same time”.

Also the S&D shadow rapporteur Marek Belka doesn’t question the “moral obligation to support Ukrainians”, but he told Euractiv that he “believe[s] that the Commission proposal should be improved in order to respond to strong voices from our farming communities”.

After tomorrow mornings vote the text is expected to pass the plenary of the European Parliament next week. 

The background

The sharp increase of imports of food commodities from Ukraine has been for months one the main drivers of the farmers’ protests in Eastern European countries and, successively, fueling discontent in other countries such as France. 

This is why when prolonging the suspension of the duties and tariffs for Ukrainian imports, the European Commission proposed an ‘emergency brake’ to curb the excessive influx of sensitive products (eggs, sugar and poultry), and measures reinforcing the safeguard mechanisms in case of disruptions to the EU market.

Despite these adjustments, six of the biggest EU farmers and food producers associations, including Copa and Cogeca,  consider the measure to be a threat to the stability of the EU food commodities market.

They wanted to extend the safeguard measures to cereals, oilseeds and honey, with the threshold activating the protection mechanism. 

Industry and farmers at odds

Today (6 March) Copa and Cogeca, the biggest EU farmers’ union, announced a ‘Flash Action’ demonstration in Strasbourg next week. They are pushing for changes and calling for a coherent ‘pro-agriculture’ approach in the set of measures to be approved by MEPs.

However, there are also those in the food sector, calling for more imports from Ukraine.

The association of the European Sugar Users (CIUS) “understand[s] the farmer’s fears of a crash in prices as a result of increased imports”, however for the sugar sector “over the last 2 years” both “imports and prices have gone up”, CIUS said in a press statement.

“Slashing imports from Ukraine will pose challenges to food production, employment, and the broader economy in both the EU and Ukraine,” they stressed.

[Edited by Rajnish Singh]

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