– Ursula von der Leye and Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis are responsible for the crisis regarding trade issues between the European Union and Ukraine – says Janusz Kowalski, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, in an interview with DoRzeczy.pl.
DoRzeczy.pl: Poland has signed an agreement on the transit of Ukrainian grain with Lithuania and Ukraine. How should this agreement be understood? Are we seeing any improvement in grain relations with Ukraine?
Janusz Kowalski: This is the consistent implementation of the Polish government’s strategy of building corridors for the transportation of agri-food products from Ukraine, through the territory of Poland, among others. Under full supervision, in the SENT system, which allows us to monitor what is sent through Polish territory. Our goal is for Poland to become a transit country to help Ukraine without destabilizing the situation on the Polish market. The agreement concluded with Lithuania stipulates that Lithuania will take full responsibility for border control of its country. Obviously, transports are carried out in the SENT system, this is the implementation of the transport corridors that we have often talked about. This shows that in this way we are strengthening our position, our substantive position, which consists of focusing on corridors. We do not agree, we will never agree and we will not go back an inch on this issue to the destabilization of the Polish agricultural market, that is to say the uncontrolled import of agricultural products from Ukraine.
Should the European Commission, including the important Berlin Commission, support the idea of these types of corridors and focus on such solutions? I have the impression that the lack of embargo and lack of support means that the problem is being pushed to the Polish side and the subject is left to itself.
Two people are responsible for the entire trade crisis between the European Union and Ukraine, which has affected agricultural producers from five countries, namely Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. These are Ursula von der Leye and European Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis. They are both politicians from the European People’s Party, from the faction of Donald Tusk and Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz. These two officials have never been to Poland, they have not met farmers, they have not had important discussions with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, they have not listened to Polish substantive arguments about this model, with which we support Ukraine in transit, but we will not allow this to destabilize the situation on the Polish market.
Ursula von der Leye never found time to go to the Polish-Ukrainian border or to the protesting farmers in Nysa or Szczecin. This shows that the Eurocrats are completely detached from reality and are actually implementing the interest policies of large foreign companies investing in Ukraine, taking away agricultural production from the European Union. On the other hand, in the interests of the Netherlands, Germany and France, they open the possibility of uncontrolled imports of agricultural products from Ukraine, destabilizing the situation on the European agricultural market. This policy of the European Union has gone completely bankrupt. Ursula von der Leye cannot cope with the crisis on the agricultural markets of several European countries, and it must be clear that we are paying her for this. She receives a huge salary from our taxes as a civil servant whose duty is to represent the interests of European farmers, including Polish producers. The plan was very simple: to destabilize the situation on the Polish market a month before the elections, so that the politician of her party, Donald Tusk, anointed by Ursula von der Leye, would increase his election chances on the basis of this crisis caused by the Eurocrats. We firmly said that we would stand with the Polish farmers. It is clear that Poland’s policy in this matter is effective.
Source: Do Rzeczy
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
