Hungarian Agriculture Minister István Nagy stated: “We protect the interests of farmers from Ukrainian agricultural products. In a joint letter with my colleagues from Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia, we call on Brussels to act. The EU legislation regulating imports from Ukraine expires in June, so the EC must find a long-term solution to the market difficulties caused by Ukrainian agricultural products.”
The countries called on the EC to return to pre-war agricultural quotas, introduce measures to protect agricultural products, and to provide automatic protection and individual quotas for member states on a regional basis.
At the same time, a large oil importer, India, is likely to raise import duties on vegetable oils for the second time in less than six months. After the revision, the import duty on crude palm, soybean, and sunflower oil will be 27.5% compared to 5.5% previously, while refined varieties of these three oils will now be subject to an import duty of 35.75%.
Last year, Ukraine exported $5.1B worth of sunflower oil, with the largest shipments going to India – $711M.