this agreement “is not the position that France defended”, reacts Marc Fesneau

“An emergency brake” on imports was put in place “for poultry, eggs and sugar”, in particular as well as “oats, corn, groats and honey”, indicated the European Parliament.

The agreement reached overnight between the States of the European Union and the European Parliament on Wednesday March 20 to cap certain Ukrainian agricultural imports exempt from customs duties is not “not yet like the one we wanted”, reacted Wednesday March 20 on Franceinfo the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau. Faced with the farmers’ crisis, the EU agreed to put in place restrictions on Ukrainian agricultural imports, which, since June 2022, have been exempt from customs duties on the internal market.

While greeting a “mark of solidarity” of the EU with regard to kyiv, the minister recalled that this “advanced” should not be done “at the cost of too much destabilization of the market”.

“We must find this point of balance between the solidarity which is necessary and at the same time, the need for the markets to be stabilized at the European level.”

Marc Fesneau, Minister of Agriculture

at franceinfo

“There are a certain number of measures and provisions which are made to put in place brakes on a certain number of imports which are too numerous”, he explained. The text in fact provides “an emergency brake for poultry, eggs and sugar”, as well as “oats, corn, groats and honey”indicated the European Parliament in a press release.

“There is a certain amount of progress, but it is not enough,” continued the minister. “The work will continue”he insisted, before specifying that “These measures must be put in place at the beginning of June.”

Include more cereals and extend the reference period

“We want to include more cereals, wheat in particular,” Marc Fesneau first clarified. Then, the reference period for setting a limit on imports was not extended, contrary to what France wishes, in order to take into account the level of exports for 2021, i.e. before the war. In fact, customs-cleared imports of these products will thus be de facto capped at the average levels imported by the EU in 2022 and 2023. “We need to have reference years that are of a different nature so that we have thresholds that are lowered a little more”underlined the elected official from Loir-et-Cher.

Furthermore, listening to the grievances of Warsaw and the Baltic countries, the European Commission wishes to propose “shortly” the establishment of customs duties on imports of agricultural products from Russia. Until then, the 27 had always refused, in the name of food security. “It has always been on the table that we do not take retaliatory measures on foodstuffs”recalled the Minister of Agriculture, for whom “It’s a question of European sovereignty.” “Europe needs to import 40 million tonnes of cereals, and countries that are capable of supplying there are not tens of thousands, there are Russia, Belarus and Ukraine” , he conceded. “If we had not done that, we too would have destabilized the markets and a certain number of countries, not France, need cereals”he underlined, evoking a “old agreement” with Russia concluded in 2019 regarding the exemption from customs duties on Russian grain. “In the medium term, we need to ensure that we are not dependent. We were in the same dependence on gas, on energy and that is what we need to get out of at the European level.” he said.