“Pressure” in the Commission to ban imports from and Belarus is being exercised by Poland, according to statements by Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Donald Tusk is convinced that a joint European decision to ban imports of food from Russia will be more effective than the individual decisions of the countries in the region, announcing that he will submit a request to the EU. At the same press conference at which Donald Tusk, his Lithuanian counterpart, Ingrida Simonite, made this statement, said Lithuania would support an EU-wide initiative to ban Russian agricultural products. However, as Bloomberg notes, the plan to ban imports of food from Russia and Belarus is essentially part of the Polish government’s response to the demands of protesting farmers, who condemn what they call an uncontrolled influx of agricultural products from Ukraine, and call for the review of the EU climate agenda. At the same time, for its part, Ukraine wants to permanently remove customs duties and quotas on imports of its own agricultural products into the EU by updating its trade agreement with the Union, or at least extend the current suspension for three years. The European Commission proposed that import duties and quotas on Ukrainian agricultural products – originally suspended in 2022 after the Russian invasion, which hit transport through the Black Sea – be lifted for another year by June 2025. It should be noted that Poland and Lithuania are not the first countries to process such an idea, as Latvia has just recently moved into a ban on imports of Russian food. The new, however, brought to the table by Donald Tusk’s proposal, is the promotion of the proposal at a pan-European level.
A ban on imports of food from Russia is proposed to the Commission by Poland
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