UCAB (Ukrainian Agribusiness Club) is extremely concerned with the Opinion of the European Parliament AGRI Committee, which was voted on February 26. The AGRI Committee’s opinion pushes for drastic limitations to the proposed roll-over of the EU autonomous trade preferences (ATMs) to Ukraine for 2024-2025. Specifically, it calls for a massive extension of the EU safeguard measures to cover virtually all items of Ukraine’s agricultural exports to the EU, from cereals to honey, as well as drastically lowers the threshold volumes activating safeguards to the import levels of 2021-2022, including the year when Ukrainian agricultural export was still limited by the TRQs and the year, when the Ukrainian economy was in shock mode following the first months of the Russian invasion.

Make no mistake: if adopted in their entirety, the amendments may hollow out the substance of the EU ATMs for the next year and effectively nullify their effect on the Ukrainian economy. By UCAB’s most conservative estimates, the proposed expansion of EU safeguard measures would cost the Ukrainian economy up to 1 billion USD of lost revenues. As Ukraine’s economy runs an exceptionally deep current accounts deficits, reaching almost 3 billion USD per month,  due to decline of non-agricultural export industries such as steel, missile attacks on its port and logistical infrastructure, as well as farmer blockade at the Ukrainian-Polish border, this shortfall of export revenues may prove critical for the country’s macroeconomic stability. This year, the projected decline of land under cultivation for cereals and oilseeds by Ukrainian farmers will reach 15-20% and the drop in the harvest of cereals and oilseeds may be from 20 to 30% from 2023/2024 MY (81,5 mln t). 

The Ukrainian farmers and agriproducers call upon the Members of the European Parliament to consider carefully the possible impact their proposals can have on the effectiveness of the EU support to Ukraine fighting for its existence and European values.