BUCHAREST, ROMANIA (AP) – Farmers in Romania and Bulgaria staged protests on Friday to express their anger over the European Union’s (EU) response to a glut of agricultural products from Ukraine that they say are flooding local markets and undercutting prices.
About 100 farmers converged in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, while hundreds more protested across the country in long convoys of tractors.
In neighbouring Bulgaria, grain producers blocked some border crossings with farm vehicles.
Some farmers outside the European Commission’s representative office in Bucharest brandished placards that read: ‘Do not punish our solidarity,’ while others urged bloc officials to ‘take responsibility, take action, take care.’
Last year, the EU waived customs duties and import quotas on Ukrainian agricultural products as a way of facilitating transport to third-country markets.
Ukraine is one of the biggest producers in the world of grain and sunflower oil, but its exports were restricted by Russia’s blockade of its Black Sea ports, threatening global food security.
Russia has warned it may pull out of a deal which has unblocked the ports since last July.
However, farmers in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, and other EU countries have been disproportionately hard-hit by an influx of cheap Ukrainian produce – namely grain – which stays on local markets and undercuts prices.
Polish farmers have also held protests in recent weeks. Poland’s Agriculture Minister, Henryk Kowalczyk, resigned on Wednesday after he became the focus of farmers’ anger.
Executive director of the League of Romanian Agriculture Producers’ Associations Liliana Piron said at the Bucharest protest that Romanian farmers have “reached a point where they feel they can no longer face the costs” of the “unfair competition” from Ukraine.
