EU Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski, who’s Polish and a member of the former “Law & Justice” (PiS) government that imposed unilateral restrictions on Ukrainian imports last year that remain in place for now under the new one, warned about the risks of free trade with Ukraine. According to him, the bloc is already facing an oversupply crisis from that country that’s harming local producers, which is why he demanded protective clauses and qualitative restrictions on some goods.
Wojciechowski also suggested that “The European Union’s efforts should be to support Ukrainian exports to third countries” instead of to European ones, arguing that not doing so would “help Russia consolidate its military and economic gains”, particularly regarding its newfound trade with Asia. The reason why he addressed this issue is because the EU is debating whether or not to extend its temporary free trade regime with Ukraine into 2025 like Commission President Ursula van der Leyen wants.
It was assessed last month that “Ukraine’s EU Accession Talks Are Symbolic & Won’t Amount To Membership Anytime Soon”, and Wojciechowski’s latest remarks extend credence to that claim. Given his position, he can indeed create problems for its economic integration into the EU, which he’s driven to do for three reasons. First, he’s presumably taking such a strong stand partly out of solidarity with his Polish political party, whose interests he informally champions despite his job being to advance the EU’s.
That’s understandable regardless of whatever one thinks about this obvious conflict of interest. Officials regularly support certain policies with ulterior interests in mind, but that’s not to say that Wojciechowski’s latest one doesn’t have any logic to them, nor that it doesn’t truly advance EU interests. This brings the analysis around to the second reason why he’s obstructing the promulgation of Ukraine’s temporary free trade regime with the EU, namely to protect the bloc’s producers.
The flood of Ukrainian agricultural products into those countries prompted neighboring states like his own and several others such as Hungary to impose unilateral restrictions on certain ones under pressure from their farmers. That in turn widened preexisting regional divisions within the EU, both in general and specifically over this issue, since most eurocrats (with Wojciechowski being a notable exception) want to place Ukraine’s economic interests over their own eastern citizens’ for ideological reasons.
In their view, it’s more important to expand the EU (whether formally with Ukraine’s de jure membership or informally through the indefinite prolongation of its free trade regime) even at the expense of its eastern members’ farmers than to protect the latter’s interests and retain internal unity. Their ideological motivations are also influenced in this context by waning Western military aid for that country as their side’s proxy war with Russia begins to wind down.
Some have already argued that the EU should step up its support for Ukraine in non-military ways, or at least retain that which it’s already extended that country such as the temporary free trade regime, in order to partially compensate for this development and not place Ukraine in a worse negotiating position. There’s admittedly a certain logic to that position, but there’s also no denying that it would be advanced at the expense of its eastern members’ farmers.
And finally, the third reason why Wojciechowski might create problems for Ukraine’s economic integration into the EU is because it’s objectively the case that redirecting that country’s agricultural exports away from Europe and back towards the Global South would create competition for Russia. Its role in feeding developing countries has grown after Ukraine exploited the temporary free trade regime with the EU to profit more from its neighbors than retain reduced margins from the Global South.
It’s sensible why Ukraine did that since the margins are higher and the profits come in more quickly than having to wait until grain-laden ships dock in those far-away counties’ ports. Without intending to, however, this created space for Russia to massively grow its global market share with all the influence that this entails over that swath of the world. The West has an interest in challenging Russia on every front, hence Wojciechowski’s point about encouraging Ukraine to resume exports to those states.
It won’t do so unless the temporary free trade regime is ended or restrictions are imposed on the import of its agricultural goods for the above reasons related to its self-interests, which is why he’s lobbying for either of those options in order for Ukraine to compete with Russia for market share once more. By introducing this goal into the debate over whether to extend that regime and on what terms, he’s implying that the EU would be selling out to Russia by prolonging it without any restrictions.
Irredeemably Russophobic eurocrats might therefore soon build upon his innuendo to ramp up their pressure on the bloc to restrict the import of Ukrainian agricultural goods as part of a compromise for extending its free trade regime in order to proverbially kill two birds with one stone. In that event, the EU would still symbolically show solidarity with Ukraine while also pushing it to compete with Russia for agricultural market share in the Global South as their economic proxy.
Nevertheless, that pragmatic solution (from the perspective of the EU’s domestic interests as explained as well as its competitive ones vis-à-vis Russia in the New Cold War) would dispel the false notion that Ukraine will ever join the bloc anytime soon, thus discrediting what Zelensky claimed last month. That’s a small cost to pay for protecting domestic interests and advancing international ones, however, which is why it can’t be ruled out that such a compromise might be brokered through Wojciechowski’s efforts.
