Dacian Cioloş says that the measures announced by Romania regarding cereals from Ukraine “in order to be effective, they must be adopted at the European level, that is, they must be applicable to all member states, because if only one or two or a few member states apply these measures and cereals can enter the other member states without control, we will not solved a great deal, because the common market has no borders”.
„Once a product has entered an EU point, in any of them, in any member state, it can go anywhere in the EU. So let’s assume that Romania and Poland seal the transports and make sure that the grain that enters through the border point with Romania or with Poland does not stop on their territory, but enters through Bulgaria, enters through Slovakia, enters through Hungary. The products that entered through other parts can also reach Romania and Poland, because no one controls them once they have entered the EU territory. These unilateral measures have no effectiveness, except one of political visibility, for politicians to flex their muscles, to show how much they want to help their producers“, adds Cioloş.
The European Commission has announced a financial aid package of 100 million euros for farmers in the countries affected by the grain from Ukraine.
Renew Europe MEP believes that Brussels has managed the crisis “unsatisfactory, clearly, because it did not come out in time with such announcements, because here, a second package is needed, because in the first package the losses were not assessed well enough, it is something that – I have said since then, and here is that after the pressure from several sides that was put on the European Commission, including from us in the European Parliament”.
„The commission is now coming with a second package, which, let’s face it, does not fully compensate for the losses, because here I will also make a parenthesis, from this whole business of uncontrolled Ukrainian grain imports, some have lost and they are the most visible, but there are others who won, there are traders who won, who bought very cheap grain from Ukraine and then sold it more expensive, either on the Romanian market or on the international market, there are animal breeders who bought grain for the cheaper animal feed, probably from Ukraine, and then they were able to keep their business afloat, so there are some who won, but there are many farmers who lost. These aids, these financings from the EC, cannot compensate for all the losses, and that is why it now seems important to me that the Ministry of Agriculture be very clear with the criteria based on which it distributes these financial compensations. From my point of view, they should go mainly to farmers who lost more, small, medium, less organized farmers, from regions that were more affected by the import of these grains. This requires the Ministry to make some evaluations, and I don’t know if it will be able to do them, if we look at how it has acted so far“, concludes Dacian Cioloş.
Grain shipments from Ukraine will be sealed and monitored on Romanian territory, announced the Minister of Agriculture, Petre Daea. Imports and transit remain permitted.
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