WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia support extending a EU ban on Ukrainian grain import to those countries until the end of the year, Polish agriculture minister Robert Telus said on Friday.
The European Union in May allowed Ukraine’s five neighbours to ban domestic sales of Ukrainian wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seeds, while allowing transit of such cargoes for export elsewhere. That ban is set to end on Sept. 15.
“We support a ban on imports into our countries until the end of the year,” Telus told a news conference.
“I want to say that even if it fails, some countries will introduce their own restrictions. Our declaration is clear.”
The five countries’ agriculture ministers also agree that they support grain transit subsidies and want other products to be added to the list of import bans, such as raspberries in the case of Poland, Telus said.
(Reporting by Pawel Florkiewicz and Anna Włodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
