Polish minister says grain talks with Ukraine tough ahead of key meeting

"Many bilateral talks have been held with Ukraine - they have been difficult talks," Siekierski was quoted as saying by state news agency PAP. He said that Ukraine wanted to maintain a liberal approach to trade while Poland thought that things like humanitarian and military aid should be treated separately from food exports to protect farmers' livelihoods in central and eastern Europe.

Talks with Ukraine on food imports have been difficult, Poland's agriculture minister said on Wednesday ahead of a meeting that Warsaw hopes will help defuse farmers' protests, but a senior lawmaker said a deal could be near.

Farmers in Poland and elsewhere in the European Union have been protesting to demand the re-imposition of customs duties on agricultural imports from Ukraine that were waived after Russia's invasion in 2022. They say Ukraine's farmers are flooding Europe with cheap imports that leave them unable to compete.

Polish Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Siekierski will meet his Ukrainian counterpart Mykola Solsky on Wednesday in Warsaw, with the governments of the countries due to convene on Thursday. "Many bilateral talks have been held with Ukraine - they have been difficult talks," Siekierski was quoted as saying by state news agency PAP.

He said that Ukraine wanted to maintain a liberal approach to trade while Poland thought that things like humanitarian and military aid should be treated separately from food exports to protect farmers' livelihoods in central and eastern Europe. He said that talks were ongoing about a system of licensing exports, but that there were differences over the range of products that would be covered.

The European Union reached a provisional agreement this month to grant Ukrainian food producers tariff-free access to its markets until June 2025, albeit with new limits on imports of grains. Earlier on Wednesday, Krzysztof Paszyk, leader of the parliamentary group of the agrarian Polish Peasants' Party (PSL), to which Siekierski also belongs, struck an optimistic tone about the talks.

"We are close to solving these problems together in dialogue," he told PAP. "I think it will be possible today and tomorrow to make what is sometimes called a transit actually a transit ... I am optimistic about the results." Polish farmers say that much of the Ukrainian grain that is supposed to transit through Poland to other countries ends up on the domestic market instead.

Ukraine says the protests, which have included blockades of the border and the spilling of Ukrainian grain across rail tracks, are harming its war effort against Russia and its economy. It also says that only a small portion of the grain it exports transits through Poland.

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