Polish farmers threaten to block the border with Ukraine again: why the authorities accepted their demands

The Polish government wants to prevent the resumption of the blockade of the Medyka-Shehyni checkpoint on the border with Ukraine. To this end, they have accepted all the demands of farmers who threaten to block the border again on January 4.

This was announced by Polish Deputy Minister of Agriculture Michal Kolodziejczak, RMF24 reports. It is noted that we are talking about:

• introduction of corn subsidies;
• increase in lending to farmers;
• maintaining the agricultural tax at the level of 2023.

"The ministry accepts all three requirements of farmers for implementation," he said. Noting that the embargo on Ukrainian grain will continue until strategic programs are developed to implement them:

• "either licensing of products coming from Ukraine;
• or quotas that will determine this.

At the same time, he expressed the opinion that Ukrainian agriculture is capable of destabilizing food production in every EU country. Specifically, Poland loses a lot from imports of Ukrainian products to the EU.

"This market has been taken away from us by products from Ukraine. We are paying a very high price for this - if there are any price drops on world markets, it will be primarily in Poland," Kolodziejczak said.

What preceded it

Kolodziejczak's speech was preceded by a statement by farmers from the organization "Deceived Village of Podkarpacie" (Podkarpacka Oszukana Wieś) about their intention to resume the blockade of the Medyka-Shehyni checkpoint on the border with Ukraine on January 4. At the same time, they threatened to make the blockade tougher than the previous one and allow only one truck per hour.

"We have not received written confirmation that our demands will be met. That is why we continue the protest," the leader of the organization Roman Kondruv said earlier.

As OBOZ.UA reported earlier, Poland's exports fell due to the blockade of the border with Ukraine at the end of 2023. According to customs officials, in November, it fell by 40%.

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