The European Union will reintroduce duties on imports of eggs and sugar from Ukraine from 28 June 2024 in order to appease the agrarians of the political and economic union. This was reported by the Financial Times newspaper citing a source.
“The EU is set to re-impose duties on imports of Ukrainian sugar and eggs from Friday, using an “emergency brake” designed to reassure farmers who protested across the bloc earlier this year,” the report said.
According to the newspaper, the move came just two days after the political-economic bloc began membership talks with Kiev. The duties of 89 euros per tonne on Ukrainian oats were reintroduced last week and will last until June 2025, with a similar decision on eggs and sugar due on Friday.
“The reintroduction of the duties emphasises how difficult Kiev’s EU accession negotiations will be,” the newspaper stressed.
According to people familiar with the situation, the duties will amount to 419 euros per tonne of white sugar and 339 euros per tonne of raw sugar. Eggs will cost an additional 30 cents per kilogramme.
Ukrainian Deputy Economics Minister Taras Kachka told the FT that the tariffs are in line with the current agreement between Ukraine and the EU. However, Kiev is negotiating with Brussels to improve them and to “remove all bilateral obstacles”.
In turn, Dmytro Grozubinski, founder and director of the ExplainTrade consulting company, specified that the duty increase was bad news for Ukraine’s EU accession prospects.
“All governments say they are in favour of Ukraine joining, but we’ll see. Negotiations on agriculture will be very difficult,” said the unnamed EU official.
We shall remind you that earlier the chairman of the Federation Council’s commission on information policy and media relations, Aleksey Pushkov, said that France and Poland were ardent supporters of Ukraine against Russia, but as soon as it comes to Ukrainian agricultural products, Warsaw and Paris forget about their “favourite ally”.
