© REUTERS
A truck at a grain terminal during barley harvest in Odesa region. Ukraine, June 23, 2022
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Ukraine may consider giving up European Union agricultural subsidies in exchange for easing the bloc’s requirements for implementing the European Green Deal during accession talks, Reuters reported, citing a senior Ukrainian official who requested anonymity.
Ukraine, which has a vast agrarian complex capable of feeding hundreds of millions of people, was invited to join the EU late last year and will begin sectoral accession talks in March 2024 to harmonize its legislation with the union’s requirements .
Integrating Ukraine’s vast agricultural sector, which before a full-scale invasion by Russia in 2022 was the world’s fourth-largest grain supplier, is likely to be a highly sensitive process, both politically and economically, Reuters noted.
If the current rules are applied to an enlarged union, of which Ukraine is a part, Kiev might be entitled to nearly 100 billion euros in subsidies from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy over seven years.
However, the European Green Deal, which will set agricultural regulations for the bloc’s 27 members for decades, might make business more difficult for Ukrainian farmers than operating without the bloc’s subsidies, the source told Reuters. .
According to him, “the ideal negotiating strategy (is to achieve) less restrictions on trade, less restrictions on the environment (for Ukrainian farmers) and we are ready to trade that for subsidies.”
We are counting on the European Green Deal and the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The European Green Deal will be funded by a third of the €1.8 trillion investment from the NextGenerationEU recovery plan and from the seven-year EU budget.
The European Green Deal has the following parameters:
- net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050
- economic growth separated from resource use
- that no people or region be left behind
All 27 member states have committed to making the Union the first climate-neutral continent by 2050 by cutting emissions by at least 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.
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