As in Germany, farmers in Poland are also taking to the streets. They fear cheap competition from Ukraine. But they also have another enemy image.
Thousands of Polish farmers have protested across the country against EU environmental policies and the influx of cheap grain from Ukraine.
According to media reports, farmers slowed down traffic on many roads and in many towns with slow-moving tractors. An overview by the farmers’ union Solidarnosc listed more than 260 planned protest actions. According to Ukrainian sources, protesting farmers also blocked the Medyka-Schegyni crossing on the border with Ukraine.
The protest was directed against the EU’s plans for environmental and climate policy, summarized, among other things, in the slogan Green Deal. Farmers in Poland and other countries considered it too radical, bureaucratic and harmful to agriculture, said Deputy Agriculture Minister Adam Nowak, according to the PAP agency. During an appearance in front of demonstrators in Sieradz in central Poland, he tried to take the edge off the protest. It was not a protest against the government, said Nowak. “The Ministry of Agriculture supports these demands in terms of content and represents them on the European stage.”
Polish farmers fear cheap imports from Ukraine
The Polish Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, who was appointed by the former national-conservative PiS government, is responsible for the EU’s agricultural policy in Brussels. Deputy Prime Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, representative of the PSL farmers’ party in the new center-left government, is calling for the commissioner’s resignation. But PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski also announced that he wanted to ask Wojciechowksi to resign from office.
Even though Poland is an important political and military supporter of Ukraine, which is being attacked by Russia, Polish farmers fear cheap imports of grain and other agricultural products from the neighboring country. Poland is a sales market for Ukrainian agriculture. Above all, it is also a transit country for bringing grain to the world market. Ship exports across the Black Sea only work with uncertainty due to the Russian war of aggression.
“Farmers rightly expect that the excessive flow of goods from Ukraine, but also from other non-European markets, into the EU area, especially Poland, will be limited,” said Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Siekierski.
According to police estimates, there were around 1,400 agricultural vehicles on the road in the western Polish city of Poznan (Posen). In Krakow, the police counted several dozen vehicles. There are disruptions, but traffic has not come to a standstill. The farmers’ protests are expected to last for 30 days.
Source: Stern
