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Amid farm protests, France said on Tuesday that it and a group of other EU countries were pushing for tighter restrictions on food imports from Ukraine to prevent destabilization of EU agricultural markets.
According to Reuters, EU members are discussing how to grant Ukraine another year of extension of duty-free access to their markets, as well as appease farmers who have protested for months against EU environmental rules and cheap imports.
French Agriculture Minister Marc Fenault told journalists before a meeting with EU colleagues in Brussels that destabilized markets could weaken public support for Kyiv, which would not be in the interests of either the EU or Ukrainians.
The European Commission has proposed suspending tariffs on Ukrainian agricultural products for another year until June 2025, with a new "emergency brake" for poultry, eggs and sugar that will lead to tariffs if imports exceed the average level of 2022 and 2023. Later, oats, corn, cereals and honey were added to the list.
Fenault said wheat should also be included, and insisted that the "break threshold" should be the average for 2021-2023. This would include the year before the full-scale Russian invasion, when Ukrainian exports to the EU were limited by tariffs and quotas.
David Clarinval, Belgium's agriculture minister, who holds the rotating EU presidency for six months, said he expected a solution to be found in the coming days, without specifying what that solution would entail.
