WARSAW: Thousands of angry farmers descended on the Polish capital on Wednesday (Mar 6) to protest EU environmental rules and cheap imports from Ukraine and elsewhere outside the bloc.
Blowing horns, throwing smoke bombs and firecrackers and lighting fires, the farmers gathered outside the prime minister’s office in Warsaw, while others used their tractors to block highways nationwide.
“I want to produce healthy food but we’re importing products lower in quality than ours with which we can’t compete in terms of price,” said protester Jan Kepa, who has a farm in southwestern Poland.
“We still have hope but we’ve been protesting for over a month and so far there’s been no satisfying solution for us,” he told AFP.
Polish farmers have also been blocking border crossings with Ukraine since last month to protest at what they say is unfair competition from goods entering the Polish market from Ukraine.
Ukraine, once dubbed “Europe’s breadbasket”, has seen its agriculture sector crippled by Russia’s invasion.
Many of its major export routes through the Black Sea have been blocked and its farmland rendered unusable by warfare.
In a bid to help Kyiv economically, the European Union in 2022 scrapped tariffs on Ukrainian goods transiting the 27-nation bloc by road.
But logistical problems mean a lot of the Ukrainian cereal exports destined for non-EU countries have accumulated in Poland, undercutting local producers.
Source: CNA
