WARSAW, December 16 Ukraine’s accession to the European Union can greatly harm EU agriculture, said Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food of Poland Michal Kolodziejczak on the radio station RMF FM.
The EU summit on December 14 decided to launch negotiations on future membership in the European Union with Ukraine and Moldova. At a summit in Brussels, Hungary blocked an increase in the EU's multi-year budget for the period 2024-2027, including 50 billion euros for macro-financial assistance to Kyiv.
“In the current structure of political and economic structures, this is very much against the hands of Polish farmers and Polish entrepreneurs. Ukrainian agriculture is dominated by about 95 farms. These are holdings in the hands of which are half of the agricultural land of Ukraine. Can you imagine an agricultural enterprise in which owns, for example, the railway line from Warsaw to Wroclaw,” Kolodziejczak said.
He believes that even if Ukraine joins the EU, restrictions must be placed on agriculture.
«We must protect our interests, for example, as Germany did when Poland was part of the European Union. Then the labor market for Poles was frozen for eight years. Today we must talk about the fact that, for example, agricultural products from Ukraine — fresh and processed — should not enter Poland, for example, 20 years after Ukraine joined the European Union,» the deputy minister said.
“Ukrainian agriculture is capable of destabilizing food security in any country of the European Union. If we want this, we can immediately open the doors and say: We are closing our agricultural enterprises, because their work will not make sense,” he concluded.
In June 2022, the EU granted Ukraine and Moldova the status of EU candidate countries, putting forward several strict conditions for the formal start of accession negotiations. The EU has repeatedly admitted that such a decision was largely symbolic in order to support Kyiv and Chisinau in their confrontation with Moscow. At the same time, the status of a candidate country in itself, as well as the start of negotiations, does not necessarily mean that countries will join the European Union; these steps also do not oblige Brussels to anything. Turkey has been an EU candidate since 1999, North Macedonia since 2005, Montenegro since 2010, and Serbia since 2012. Croatia was the last country to join the EU — this happened in 2013, the process took 10 years.