What dangerous precedent EU set in relations with Ukraine

The European Union has officially launched a reassessment procedure for granting Ukraine autonomous trade preferences. The EU has extended the preferences for Ukraine for the second time, opening its market to Ukrainian goods. The new extension has turned out to be scandalous.

Read more about the process of approving the extension of trade measuresfor Ukraine and its consequences in the article by Yurii Panchenko, European Pravda's editor - Precedent against Ukraine: dangerous new trade conditions with the EU. The European Commission has responded to massive farmer protests, accommodating countries whose farmers suffered from the increased Ukrainian agricultural exports. A mechanism for emergency suspension of preferences for three product groups (eggs, poultry, and sugar) was proposed if their export volume to the EU exceeds the average for 2022-2023.

Such a compromise proposed by the European Commission seems quite acceptable for Ukraine, but it clearly does not satisfy everyone in the EU, especially Polish farmers. By the end of January to early February 2024, the Ukrainian government had no doubt that this decision would be final. This decision was quickly approved by the European Parliament, but unexpectedly stalled at the European Council stage.

Soon after, Polish media reported that Prime Minister of Poland Donald Tusk managed to block the decision. By the way, the Polish media informed about it ahead of the long-awaited Ukrainian-Polish intergovernmental meeting, which clearly added tension. Such a review became possible because President of France Emmanuel Macron, who also faces significant issues due to farmers' protests, unexpectedly supported Tusk's demands.

The updated expanded list of goods includes also sugar, oats, corn, cereals and honey, in addition to the already mentioned eggs, poultry. An even more painful for Ukraine is the new methodology for calculating the volume of agricultural exports from Ukraine. The calculations now include the second half of 2022 - the period preceding the opening of the EU market, and accordingly, when Ukrainian exports were low.

Ukraine strongly opposed such an extension, but its arguments were not considered. Another dangerous novelty is shortening of the time period for activation of the automatic safeguard from 21 to 14 days. Kyiv doubts that within such a period, it is possible to objectively establish the damage from Ukrainian imports to EU producers.

Consequently, the decisions made will primarily have political grounds. Also, due to the review procedure, it is possibile that the European Parliament will not have time to approve this decision before the end of its term. And then it will have to be adopted by the new European Parliament.

So, for some time, the trade conditions between Ukraine and the EU will return to those before 2022. It is not so likely though. Another significant risk is the possibile review of the already adopted decision by the European Commission, an extremely dangerous precedent in the relations between Ukraine and the EU.

"Never before in the history of Ukraine-EU relations has a decision adopted by the European Commission been reviewed. Accordingly, now we have no guarantees that a similar review will not be carried out on other decisions concerning Ukraine," unofficial sources in the government say. Primarily, this is about the "transport visa free-regime" - the opportunity to carry out quota-free freight transport by road with EU countries.

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