A spat over farming bodes ill for Ukraine’s future European prospects
Read more of our recent coverage of the Ukraine war If the phrase wasn’t already taken, Ukraine and the EU could be said to enjoy a “no-limits friendship". The bloc’s 27 countries, four of which border Ukraine, have provided money and weapons to their neighbour, taken in its refugees and trained its troops. Ukrainian flags in Brussels dangle from balconies and official buildings.
To bolster morale while fighting endures, and help reconstruction once it ends, the club has raised the prospect of Ukraine soon joining its ranks. In many ways it already has. President Volodymyr Zelensky now routinely addresses summits of EU leaders, including once in person.
More tangibly, after Russia launched its full-scale invasion last year Ukraine was given tariff-free access to the club’s single market, beyond trade deals already in place. But it seems the friendship may have limits after all. European politicians have found a constituency even dearer to them than Ukrainians: their own farmers.
On April 15th Poland announced it was shutting off imports of most types of Ukrainian foods; many in central Europe all but followed suit, despite protests from Kyiv. The move undoes much of the trade largesse extended to the EU’s embattled neighbour last spring. Given that agricultural produce makes up two-fifths of Ukraine’s total goods exports—there is a reason half the national flag depicts a golden wheat field—the shortfall will be keenly felt by an economy at war.
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