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AgriMin Daea: The European Commission has extended restrictions on grain imports from Ukraine to September 15.
The European Commission has extended the restrictions on grain imports from Ukraine until September 15, with the relevant European Union regulation having already been published in the Official Journal, Romania's Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Petre Daea told AGERPRES on Tuesday.
"The European Union regulation has already been published in the Official Journal. The restrictions on wheat, corn, rapeseed and sunflower imports from Ukraine are extended until September 15. It proves that we were persistent, we managed to submit the necessary information, and the European Commission understood the difficulties faced by farmers and decided on it, given that shortly it is harvest time and we must have free spaces and also the possibility to capitalise on the yields both internally and externally," said Daea.
Regarding the unlocking of a second support package worth EUR 100 million for farmers affected by cheap imports from Ukraine within which the commission proposed to allocate an almost EUR 30 million for Romania, Daea said that Hungary's compliance with suspending the unilateral measure it has taken is currently expected.
"I hope that after the extension of restrictions on grain imports from Ukraine, after the publication of Regulation 1,100 of June 5, 2023, Hungary will suspend its measure, and the commission will release the money."
Last week, Ukraine's President of Volodymyr Zelensky called for the unconditional removal of all export restrictions imposed on Ukrainian agricultural produce, during discussions with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
As early as May, Daea and his counterparts from four other EU member states - Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia - sent a letter to the commission in which they requested the restriction of imports of Ukrainian agricultural produce and the extension of the term past June 5. He said that the measure supports Romanian farmers who will no longer face competition from Ukrainian produce on the domestic market.
