Agrarian Countries Uniting Against Murder of Agriculture in Europe by Ukraine - Orban
© Sputnik / Thierry Monasse
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BUDAPEST (Sputnik) - There is an alliance of agrarian countries, which seeks to prevent the murder of European agriculture by Ukrainian imports, for this one has to fight the lobbyists, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said.
"Ukraine's entry into the European Union — if everything is as it is now — will simply kill the Hungarian agriculture, we won't make it. It will be better to simply close the shop. And not only here, but also in France. And there are those who want to make money on Ukrainian imports to Europe, we need to fight them, we need to push them aside and develop a schedule that would save Hungarian and European farmers," Orban said at a press conference.
According to the politician, now "a very powerful union of agrarian countries is being created, which wants to rationalize Ukraine's approach to the European Union so that we are not killed by everything that arrives here, it requires serious negotiations."
Earlier, the EU Council approved the decision to extend duty-free import of goods from Ukraine, including agricultural products, until June 2025. Hungary retained a unilateral ban on the import of Ukrainian agricultural products, despite this decision.
Hungary previously stated that the leadership of the European Union, extending duty-free import from Ukraine, "betrayed" European farmers and supported the interests of Ukrainian oligarchs, so Budapest unilaterally introduces the mandatory labeling of all the goods prohibited from the territory of Ukraine, regardless of their territory, regardless of their countries of origin.
On September 15, 2023, the European Commission decided not to extend the restrictions on the import of the four items of the Ukrainian agricultural production in several border countries of the EU, but obligated Kiev to introduce measures to control export. After this, the authorities of Slovakia, Hungary and Poland announced that they were prolonging the ban unilaterally.
In particular, Hungary extended the ban on a national basis, 24 products were included in the list of prohibited to import. In addition to cereals, the list includes different types of meat, poultry, eggs, honey, vegetables and wine.
