Polish Government and Farmers Fail to Reach Agreements

March 1, 2024 Hour: 7:17 am

On Thursday afternoon, the meeting between Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Siekierski, and protesting farmers ended without an agreement.

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After the meeting, Tusk said that all participants wanted to protect Polish agriculture, the Polish market and the European market from the consequences of the ill-advised decision to fully liberalize trade with Ukraine.

“We believed that we were on the same side. We want to help Ukraine and we will help Ukraine,” Tusk said, adding that “this support cannot be at the expense of the Polish farmers.”

Tusk also said that the Polish side, both the protesters and the government, would prepare precise demands regarding changes to the European Green Deal.

Polish farmers decided to close the border with Lithuania after the border with Ukraine.
They are very outraged that Ukrainian grain is sold cheaply to Poland through Romania and Lithuania.

Recently they rendered hundreds of tons of grain coming from Ukraine unusable.
Farmers… pic.twitter.com/W5sINwXOI6

— S p r i n t e r (@Sprinter99800)
March 1, 2024

Polish Prime Minister warned that his country was not going to respect the European Green Deal if some of its provisions were not changed.

Despite describing the meeting as constructive, Krzysztof Chmiel, a farmer representative, said that they learned nothing specific and no decisions were made at the meeting.

With no agreement reached with the government, the next protest would be highly likely carried out as planned on March 6 in Warsaw, he added.

On Tuesday, Polish farmers staged a demonstration in Warsaw, demanding the removal of some provisions of the European Green Deal, which they say hampers agricultural production in the bloc, and the closure of the borders to restrict the influx of agri-food products from non-EU countries, mainly Ukraine.