Polish farmers plan to block the Lithuanian border because of Ukrainian grain, the Ukrainian mass media reported, citing the Lithuanian LRT.
Polish farmers are expanding their protests against the transit of Ukrainian grain. They are preparing for two new blockades this week at the Polish-German border crossing in Swiecko and at the Budzisko-Kalvarija crossing on the border with Lithuania.
According to Karol Pieczyński, who is organising the blockade on the Lithuanian border, Polish farmers will stop and physically inspect all vehicles that are likely to be carrying Ukrainian grain or other agricultural products. He told LRT RADIO:
The protest should start on March 1 at 10:00. It will not be a complete blockade of the border crossing. We, farmers, together with the Polish authorities, would like to check what is being transported in the trucks, with particular attention to those vehicles that have the potential to transport agricultural products. Of course, this does not apply to private vehicles, fuel tankers, vehicles transporting metal or livestock […]. If we see grain and other agricultural products on the road, we would like to know where they are coming from, why and how they are being transported to get a sense of the volume of traffic.
Zenonas Buivydas, secretary general of Linava, Lithuania’s national road haulage association, said the border blockade planned by Polish farmers would cause significant damage to Lithuania. Buivydas told BNS on Monday:
Blocking the border is a huge loss for us as a transit country. Now, we have the European Union market, it’s no longer a closed market. […] We will suffer more than Poland. It has to do not just with Lithuanian hauliers here, we are a transit country, a Scandinavian, Baltic corridor. We are no longer in a vacuum. […] I understand that they want to achieve something but can they do it at the expense of others?
Pieczyński said he realised that such inspections would inconvenience hauliers, but asked for solidarity with Polish farmers. He explained:
We just want to draw attention to what is going on because we feel that our interests are being violated and we are not receiving support from anyone. […] The idea of blocking the Lithuanian border came up in the context of thinking about how to put more pressure on the Polish government.
According to him, the main problem Polish farmers face is the suspicion that some of the Ukrainian grain, which is supposed to transit through Poland, remains in the country. The organiser of the border blockade said:
[The Ukrainian] agricultural production is transferred from trucks to trains in Poland. Their final destination is transit ports on the Baltic Sea, but farmers suspect that some of this production is staying in Poland. We are against any kind of provocation; we try and make sure that our protests are in the interests of Polish farmers. We make sure that no radicals, marginals, or other initiatives that are politically unfavourable to us emerge among us. We coordinate our protests with the authorities to ensure that all protests are legitimate and peaceful, and avoid any contact with potential provocateurs.
Ukraine must realise that the European market cannot accept its agricultural products in such quantities, European Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski said. Wojciechowski also added:
Our Ukrainian partners must understand the situation of our farmers, no market can sustain this level of increased supplies in such a short period.
The Lithuanian Grain Producers Association said on Monday that the country’s farmers would not join a week-long blockade of Polish farmers at the border.
Polish farmers have been blocking Ukrainian trucks from entering their country to protest what they see as unfair competition from cheap imports from the eastern neighbour. The conflict over Ukrainian grain has undermined friendly relations between Warsaw and Kyiv.
A few weeks ago, Warsaw managed to end a similar two-month blockade of Polish farmers. However, last Tuesday they launched a new wave of protests, blocking about 100 roads leading to the Ukrainian border.
