Last December, the head of the MAIA Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry Ludmila Catlabuga announced that the government would not apply the mechanism of mandatory licensing of supplies of the above-mentioned Ukrainian goods to the Moldovan market in 2026. Accordingly, despite the negative reaction of farmers, on December 31, 2025, this regime of regulation (in fact – restriction) of imports of agricultural products from Ukraine ended.
But this week activists of non-governmental organizations of agricultural producers began to “disperse” the topic of introducing licenses for Ukrainian imports (primarily grain) this year as well. It has already been picked up by some specialized media.
The leitmotif is the same – some EU countries continue to severely restrict supplies of Ukrainian goods by administrative measures. Among them is Romania, the most important trade partner of the Republic of Moldova. The Romanian parliament adopted and the president promulgated a law extending the authorization regime for Ukrainian imports of a wide range of agro-food products (especially important – cereals, oilseeds and sugar) until the end of 2026.
In this regard, Romanian farmers insist that uncontrolled deliveries to Romania (read – the European Union) of Ukrainian goods “under the Moldovan flag” should stop. Obviously, Moldovan farmers are nervous about such a question.
Are such suspicions justified? Romanian experts point to the fact that last year Moldova significantly increased the export of durum wheat. But Moldova does not produce a lot of such products. But neighboring Ukraine grows a lot of durum wheat.
However, the “suspicion of re-export” is still an unconfirmed hypothesis. The same as the assumption that the “metronidazole scandal” in Moldovan poultry products is a problem of fodder from Ukraine.
Anyway, the background for Moldovan-Romanian trade relations in the beginning of 2026 is not the most positive. Especially since the EU-Mercosur agreement is “pro” Brazilian wheat and sugar, Argentine sunflower and sunflower oil and, indirectly, “contra” agro-food imports from Ukraine.
Finally, representatives of farmers’ organizations claim: as soon as it became known that there will be no more licenses for Ukrainian imports in 2026, wholesale prices for corn in Moldova decreased by 0.2-0.5 lei/kg (from 3-3.50 to 2.7-2.8 lei/kg). And in the north of the country a lot of corn of the 2025 crop is still in the field.
