At a meeting on 9 April, the European Parliament's Committee on International Trade approved a one-year extension of the agreement on duty-free trade in food with Ukraine with additional restrictions, the Committee on Agrarian and Land Policy reported.
It is noted that 26 members of the European Parliament's relevant committee voted in favour of extending Ukraine's preferential trade regime with the European Union, taking into account safeguards for agricultural products, while eight voted against.
The agreement agreed on the previous day stipulates that the suspension of import duties and quotas on Ukrainian exports to the EU will be extended until 5 June 2025. At the same time, it contains two safeguard mechanisms to protect the EU market.
The first mechanism is an enhanced version of the existing restrictions, which will be applied on the basis of regular monitoring by the European Commission.
The second mechanism will oblige the European Commission to re-impose tariff quotas on imports from Ukraine of poultry meat, eggs, sugar, as well as oats, corn, cereals and honey, if they exceed the arithmetic average of the volumes imported in the second half of 2021, 2022 and 2023.
This mechanism is automatically triggered 14 days after the excess exports are detected, rather than 21 days later, as previously envisaged. In addition, it now takes into account import data for the pre-war year 2021, not just 2022 and 2023.
The European Parliament must finally approve the agreement at a plenary session on 24 April 2024, the last for this term. Then the EU Council must give its formal consent. The agreement will enter into force on 6 June 2024 for a period of one year.