Ukraine loses positions in the European honey market, Moldova regains them
More than 70% of Ukrainian honey supplies went to the European Union, writes Agrotimes.ua citing information from the State Customs Service. The largest importer of Ukrainian honey in 2025 (in monetary terms) is Germany (19.8 percent), followed by Poland (12.7 percent) and Italy (8.8 percent).
Market operators attribute the reduction of Ukrainian honey supplies to the European market to the change in the EU customs policy last year. Since 2022, as a gesture of support for the warring Ukraine, the EU authorities have exempted from customs duties the supply of a wide range of Ukrainian agri-food products. As a result, since then, free exports of Ukrainian honey to the EU annually exceeded 80-100 thousand tons.
Since the beginning of last year, the EU has restored the pre-war quota regime for exports from Ukraine. In particular, the duty-free quota for Ukrainian honey was initially set at 6 thousand tons, and since autumn it has been expanded to 35 thousand tons. Nevertheless, due to favorable pricing conditions, actual honey exports from Ukraine significantly exceeded the preferential quota.
Euroquotas for Ukrainian honey boosted honey exports from Moldova
In 2025 Moldova exported about 4.5 thousand tons of honey worth $13.8 million, almost the entire volume of supplies went to the European Union. In physical terms, last year’s exports of Moldovan honey to the European market increased by more than a third compared to the previous year’s figure. Traders directly link the increase in demand for honey from Moldova to the decrease in its supplies to the EU from Ukraine.
