Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu assured, on Monday, the Romanian farmers that there were no requests to export grain from Ukraine to Romania, being an understanding between the two governments that Kiev will not request this.
At the same time, the Romanian Prime Minister stated that, as part of this agreement, his Ukrainian counterpart, Denîs Şmîhal, will send him a licensing proposal, after the European Commission requested to come up with a licensing system regarding the export of cereals in EU states, with four agricultural products that have been banned so far.
“First and foremost there was a discussion that I had on Saturday and Sunday with the Prime Minister of Ukraine and the Commission. You saw, the Commission requested to come up with a licensing system regarding the export of grain to the EU states, something that my colleague Victor Negrescu and I also requested when we had the meeting with the President of the Commission. The prime minister of Ukraine came to the same logic, saying that a very rigorous control will still be needed. Up to this moment, since the Commission took the decision not to extend the ban, not a single kilogram of wheat or anything else has been imported into Romania, which will also be the case today. Not that Ciolacu would have banned, or that the Government imposed a ban on customs. It was a “gentleman’s agreement” between me and the Prime Minister of Ukraine that we both respected. There has been no request in any customs that there is any grain export from Ukraine to Romania until this moment.
Today we are waiting, as the Prime Minister of Ukraine said, for a licensing proposal to discuss. In case there will be requests to export to Romania, I will definitely ask the Minister of Agriculture, Economy, to make a joint order that the restriction be extended for a period of 30 days until things are clarified. I want to assure the farmers that it will not be what it was a year or so ago. The understanding was that there would be no export requests on Romanian territory and the second understanding was that during today’s day he would send me the draft that we are also discussing with the Commission. We are talking about the four products that have been banned so far“, said Marcel Ciolacu.
The Romanian PM mentioned that so far “with the special efforts made by the Minister of Transport, we have reached 2.5 million tons of grain to transit Romania per month”. “We cannot continue that 90% of transit is only by road. Romania has had some rapid investments, through the Ministry of Transport, both on the railways and on the transit on the Danube”, Ciolacu pointed out.
The Alliance for Agriculture and Cooperation asked the Ciolacu government on Saturday to ban the import of several agri-food products from Ukraine and stated that this measure is essential for saving Romanian farmers and protecting Romania’s food security. More specifically, the representatives of the Alliance requested the urgent adoption of a normative act that would prohibit the import into Romania of a number of agri-food products from Ukraine.
Farmers in Bulgaria also protested today the lifting of restrictions on Ukrainian grain, and traffic was blocked for several housbetween Romania and Bulgaria, on the bridges over the Giurgiu-Ruse and Calafat-Vidin Danube.
Bulgarian farmers asked authorities to to keep bans on grain imports from Ukraine and want other products like crude oil, fresh fruit and milk, meat, honey, live animals to be put on the list of restrictions.
Ukraine is suing Poland, Hungary and Slovakia for grain import restrictions
On the other camp, Ukraine announced it will sue Poland, Hungary and Slovakia over restrictions they imposed on Ukrainian grain imports after the European Commission lifted the restrictions in May, Ukraine’s trade representative Taras Kachka said.
In May, the European Union gave Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia the right to ban internal sales of wheat, corn, rapeseed and sunflower seeds from Ukraine, allowing only the transit of these goods for export elsewhere. The ban expired on September 15.
But Poland, Slovakia and Hungary announced on Friday that they would maintain their own restrictions on Ukrainian grain imports, despite the Commission’s decision. Authorities in Warsaw, Bratislava and Budapest argue that they are acting in the interests of their economies and that their decisions are intended to protect their farmers from the influx of Ukrainian products.
Good but be careful though, the Ukrainian grain could be baptised Turkish and then imported to Romania. Classical trick that many countries in EU do when they purchase Russian petroleum via Turkey or India.