European Parliament's Committee on Trade supports new conditions of preferential trade with Ukraine

At a meeting on 9 April, the European Parliament's Committee on International Trade approved a one-year extension of the duty-free food trade agreement with Ukraine with additional restrictions.

Source: European Pravda

Details: Taking into account safety measures for agricultural products, the extension of Ukraine's preferential trade regime with the EU was voted for by 26 members of the European Parliament's relevant committee, while eight voted against.

The agreement agreed on the day before stipulates that the suspension of import duties and quotas on Ukrainian exports to the EU will be extended until 5 June 2025. At the same time, it contains two safeguard mechanisms to protect the EU market.

The first mechanism is an enhanced version of the existing restrictions, which will be applied on the basis of regular monitoring by the European Commission.

The second, new mechanism will oblige the European Commission to reintroduce tariff quotas on imports of poultry, eggs, sugar, as well as oats, maize, cereals and honey from Ukraine if they exceed the arithmetic average of the volumes imported in the second half of 2021, 2022 and 2023.

This mechanism is automatically triggered 14 days after the excess exports are detected, rather than 21 days as previously envisaged. In addition, it now takes into account import data for the pre-war year 2021, not just 2022 and 2023.

The European Parliament is to give final approval to the agreement at its plenary session on 24 April, the last of its current term. Then the Council of the EU must give its formal consent. The agreement will take effect on 6 June 2024 for a period of one year.

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