Moreover, the British edition of the Financial Times quoted informed interlocutors as saying that the EU might impose significantly higher duties on Ukrainian imports in just a few weeks.
A special duty-free regime for imports from Ukraine was introduced in 2022 after the outbreak of hostilities and was designed to mitigate negative consequences for Ukrainian exports and the economy as a whole.
A European Commission spokesman confirmed to the FT that the preferential treatment would not be extended, but that Ukraine would be offered a certain transitional period.
According to Ukrainian experts, corn, sugar, honey and poultry will suffer the most from the abolition of the “trade visa-free regime”. The annual quota for duty-free imports of corn to the EU will be reduced from 4.7m tons to 650,000 tons, poultry from 57.1,000 to 40,000 tons, and sugar from 109,000 to 40.7,000 tons.
Octavian Calmic, former Minister of Economy and head of the Lex Econ consulting center, noted for Logos Press that the cancellation of the “trade visa-free zone” for Ukraine by the European Union may have a serious negative impact on Moldova. First of all, most likely, “in a package” with Ukraine, the EU will terminate the increased quotas for duty-free delivery of seven categories of Moldovan goods, which were also granted to our country in 2022. These are plums, grapes, apples, grape juice, cherries, tomatoes and garlic.
“It is true that quotas for most of these goods were not chosen by Moldovan exporters anyway,” Octavian Calmyk specifies. – But for suppliers of plums and table grapes to the European market, for example, the abolition of increased quotas can be a serious blow”.
In addition, due to the sharp restriction of supply opportunities on the EU market, Ukrainian goods may flood into the Moldovan market and create serious competition to the products of local farmers, says the former Minister of Economy. Both in terms of volume and price. This may become another serious problem in the relations between agricultural producers and the Moldovan government, which have not been getting along very well lately, Octavian Calmyk said.
