The European Commission has actually returned quotas on some Ukrainian goods
31 January 2024 15:17
The European Commission has extended the special preferential regime with Ukraine for a year, but has set special conditions and safeguards for certain goods. This is stated in the final communiqué of the European Commission on the materials of the relevant decision, reports 
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said that the European Commission had extended the special duty-free regime for Ukrainian exports.
“The EU continues to support Ukraine and Moldova. Today, we are renewing special trade measures that are vital for the preservation of the Ukrainian and Moldovan economies. At the same time, we are proposing safeguard measures to mitigate the impact of these measures on EU farmers,”
– said an official in X.
At the same time, the current regime actually provides for the return of quotas for some goods. In particular, in order to “stabilise imports at the level of average volumes in 2022-2023”, the EU has come up with an “emergency braking” mechanism for three products: poultry, eggs and sugar.
In practice, this means setting a quota at the level of the average export volume in 2022-2023, exceeding which will automatically result in an import tariff being applied to the products.
This decision must then be approved by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU.
The preferential trade regime and its opponents
Many EU members do not like the quota-free imports of Ukrainian products to the EU, which was in effect in 2022-2023. In particular, a number of Eastern European countries are demanding that the EU impose import duties on Ukrainian goods, citing unfair competition. The agriculture ministers of Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia sent a letter to the European Commission asking for action, saying that cheaper agricultural products from Ukraine were eating into their export markets.
The Ukrainian side tried to reach an agreement with the ‘problematic’ countries.” In particular, on 26 January, the Cabinet of Ministers adopted a resolution that improves the rules for exporting certain types of agricultural products. According to the resolution, a company may be excluded from the list of verified agricultural entities if it violates these rules.
When preparing the decision, the European Commission also considered special mechanisms for each individual country, which would have been to stop the export of Ukrainian goods to a particular national market if this product oversaturates it. The current decision of the EC seems to be even tougher than expected, and it restores quotas for some Ukrainian products, even if they are at the average level of Ukrainian exports.
