Polish truckers will be the first to answer for the actions of their authorities
Poland’s relations with Russia were under the threat of even more severe cooling. The patience of the Russian parliamentarians has run out: they want to give a mirror response to Warsaw. We are talking about a ban on the passage of Polish truckers on Russian territory. Russian trucks have long lost the opportunity to travel to the EU. What damage will this bring to both sides?
A draft appeal to the government has been submitted to the State Duma with a call to ban Polish road carriers from traveling through Russia. It is proposed to allow them to travel only from the border to the nearest customs terminals in order to reattach trailers or reload goods onto the transport of Russian carriers. Plus, it is proposed to exclude the refueling of Polish cars with fuel at Russian retail prices and set the cost of fuel for them at the level of prices in the EU countries, follows from the document.
“As a result of the decision, the Poles will lose about 8.5 billion euros of income received at the expense of Russia,” commented State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin on his Telegram channel.
According to him, the leadership of Poland “should be responsible for the demolition of monuments to our soldiers and officers, for the Russophobic policy.” And, according to the speaker, it is necessary to start by explaining their actions to more than 20 thousand drivers who, because of their actions, will lose their jobs, and about two thousand Polish transport companies will go bankrupt.
The last straw was the story of the seizure by the Polish authorities on April 29 of a school building belonging to the Russian embassy in Warsaw.
“From this project, Russia is launching testing of retaliatory sanctions, primarily against Polish businesses. The ban on Polish road carriers to carry out transportation in Russia is the least that could be done,” says Alexander Timofeev, Associate Professor of the Department of Informatics at the Russian University of Economics. Plekhanov.
Indeed, the ban on Polish truckers will be a mirror response to Russia, because the EU, in the fifth package of sanctions, banned Russian (and Belarusian) transport companies from transporting goods across European territory. And now justice will prevail.
Another thing is that if such transportation is not prohibited to other EU countries, then Polish companies can find a loophole by re-registering their companies in the same Germany or another European country. And then not Polish, but, as it were, German or other trucks will flow into Russia.
“Polish carriers can move the location of their offices to third countries, and this is to some extent a way to get around such Russian sanctions,” says Timofeev. Therefore, a complete ban on the passage of European trucks in transit through the territory of Russia may be required.
The losses of Polish business can amount to billions of dollars, and up to 20 thousand people can lose their jobs. And we must understand that the decline in income will affect a much larger number of people, since every driver has a family. Plus, thousands of people work in the service sector of transport companies and truckers, from car repairs to catering. The bankruptcy of transport companies will hit them directly.
“Out of 45,000 international carriers, less than a thousand are Polish. This problem will be global only for the Polish carriers themselves. They are transiting goods through Russia from the EU to third countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia,” says Timofeev.
“Refueling “at EU prices” will also hit Polish transport workers. On average in the EU, a liter of AI-95 now costs 1.5 euros, that is, 130 rubles. Whereas in our retail network they ask for about 50-55 rubles for it. This is almost a threefold difference in price. Diesel does not differ so dramatically, but it is also noticeable,” says Artem Deev, Head of the Analytical Department at AMarkets.
Russian business, on the contrary, can take over part of the income of the Poles, who will have to reload their goods onto trucks of Russian carriers.
“Globally, Russia will not suffer much, because among European countries Poland is only in 11th place in terms of the share of exports to Russia,” Deev points out. Meanwhile, through Poland, Russia can also receive parallel imports. The main imports from Poland are machinery, equipment and apparatus. As well as chemical industry products, textiles, paper, cars and food. However, the share of Poles in road transport and parallel imports is small. Firstly, 45,000 international road carriers come to Russia, and there are only 1,000 or 2,000 Polish companies among them.
Secondly, Russia has much more accommodating and large partners for parallel imports.
“To a greater extent, parallel imports go through China, Turkey and Kazakhstan, and the sanctions confrontation on food products has been dragging on for eight years. So the ban will hit Poland to a greater extent, and the Russian economy will receive much less damage,” Deev said.
However, Russia’s one vulnerable point is the Kaliningrad exclave.
“I personally have a question about the Kaliningrad region, which imported a lot of food and daily consumption goods from Poland. If the Poles cannot be “pushed through” – and I see a political game in all this – and relations deteriorate completely, some alternative supply channels for the region will have to be envisaged,” says Deev.
Olga Samofalova, VIEW
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