French cereal growers join Eastern Europe’s call for safeguards against Ukrainian imports
French cereal producers are calling on the government to use all its weight at forthcoming meetings to make the EU introduce safeguard clauses to protect the sector from Ukrainian imports, like those granted for poultry and sugar.
“We must show solidarity with Ukraine, but after two years of efforts, we can no longer bear the consequences alone,” the French cereal growers’ unions (AGPB and AGPM) warned in a press release on Wednesday, 14 February.
The European Commission has just granted safeguard clauses to limit imports of Ukrainian poultry, eggs and sugar into Europe, thereby protecting the sector, and cereal growers are demanding the same.
Since June 2022, Brussels has lifted all restrictions, such as customs duties and quotas, on imports of Ukrainian agricultural products to help the country in its war effort.
As a result, the EU has brought in 20 million tonnes of Ukrainian cereals between 2022 and 2023, twice as much as before the war.
In France, although cereal imports remain relative, they have nevertheless reached 13,000 tonnes in 2022-2023, compared with less than 1,000 before the war.
French cereal growers see this as “an unsustainable distortion of the market”, given that in Ukraine “, production costs are almost half as high, and environmental requirements are less demanding”, they added.
French wheat and grain growers are joining farmers from Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, calling for ’emergency brakes’ on the excessive influx of food commodities from Kyiv. Recently, Polish and Romanian farmers blocked the borders to prevent cereals from entering their countries.
The issue of imports from Ukraine adds to the farmers’ discontent in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, and Latvia.
The main farmers’ organisations in those countries met on Tuesday (13 February) in Poland, threatening the EU with further actions if no measures were taken.
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A return to pre-war import levels
Like Bulgaria recently, France is officially requesting the introduction of an “automatic safeguard clause” for cereals, in the same way as for poultry, sugar and eggs.
Although the European Commission considers that competition from Ukrainian products has not yet had “a negative effect on the entire European market”, it recently agreed to the introduction of “emergency brakes” and a reintroduction of customs duties for these three “sensitive” products in the event of imports exceeding the average level for the years 2022 and 2023.
This procedure is authorised under the Autonomous Trade Measures (ATMs) with Ukraine, which run until 2025.
In addition to including cereals among these sensitive products, French producers asked to fix the reference period for triggering the safeguard mechanism at “pre-war import volumes”, i.e. before 2022.
This demand comes at a time when cereal prices are declining at global level.
On Thursday morning, the French Minister for Agriculture Marc Fesneau met with the inter-professional organisation to resolve another problem: the transport of cereals via the Seine, which will have to be temporarily suspended during the Olympic Games.
Against this tense backdrop, producers point out that in 2023, self-employed farmers on “60 to 65% of arable farms” received an income below the minimum wage.
They are, therefore, calling on France to “pull out all the stops” at forthcoming European meetings. This issue is due to be on the agenda of the Council of European Agriculture Ministers on 26 February.
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