Politicians never fail to find ways to claim victory after election defeats. After Sunday's loss in the Polish presidential elections, Tusk’s shaky government is nonetheless painting itself as defender of the countryside. The Polish People’s Party (PSL), whose Czesław Siekierski is Agriculture Minister, is telling farmers it has prevented Brussels from extending trade benefits to the farming powerhouse of Ukraine. The current duty-free regime will cease from 5 June.
"We have solved the problems with Ukraine. We stopped the uncontrolled flow of grain and restored trade rules," Siekierski announced on Wednesday 4 June.
And while claiming to have “stopped” imports is an overstatement, PSL highlights a reality widely known in Brussels: national tensions in Poland weighed heavily on the Commission's trade negotiations with Kyiv.
On Friday, the EU and Ukraine will revert to pre-war tariff quotas on agri-food exports – a blow that will cost Kyiv billions but will largely be taken by Polish farmers as cause for celebration.
In a statement last month, PSL said the day will “go down in the history of Polish villages” and that farmers should be thankful for Poland's lobbying in the European capital.
“This is a huge success for the government. We have shown it is possible to protect the national interest without turning away from Europe” said Deputy Prime Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz (PSL).
Polish farmers’ fears of being undercut by Ukrainian products ignited rural tensions during the electoral campaign.
“We simply cannot compete with Ukrainian grain,” Polish farmer Maciej Brzozowski told me when I visited the Polish countryside in May. He complained that Ukrainian farmers are subject to far laxer pesticide rules. Marginal groups of Polish farmers are still staging protests about this.
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