Tariff quotas for duty-free imports of Ukrainian goods to the European Union, which severely limit the possible export volumes from Ukraine, under the current conditions have become artificial barriers that block restoring and development of Ukrainian agriculture.

The Ukrainian AgriCouncil (UAC) has called on the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food to initiate the abolition of tariff quotas for Ukrainian agricultural imports to the EU by Ukraine’s European partners and the European Union leadership.

"Russia's blockade of Ukrainian seaports and sea area has exercised a devastating blow to the agricultural sector resulting in the suspension of agricultural exports to other countries as Ukrainian agriculture is export-oriented," the statement said.

The VAR explains that the only way Ukraine can sell its agricultural products abroad is by rail and highways in the direction to the European Union, but the capacity of this direction is about 1 million tons per month, while before the war almost 5 million tons of agricultural products were exported from the country, mostly cereals and oilseeds as well as products of their primary processing. Continuation of the war as well as post-war restoring requires a radical restructuring of Ukrainian agriculture and its reorientation to the exports of processed food products with high added value. However, this is currently impossible due to tariff quotas for duty-free imports of Ukrainian goods to the European Union, which severely limit possible exports from Ukraine.

"Effective assistance by the EU to farmers and Ukraine as a whole in this difficult time would be the abolition of all tariff quotas on imports of Ukrainian agricultural products to EU countries, as the existence of quotas that are not used or cannot be used by Ukrainian producers is meaningless. Furthermore, the quotas, that restrict the export of Ukrainian agricultural food products to EU countries, undermine Ukraine's ability to resist Russian aggression and preserve the Ukrainian state. Otherwise, the agricultural sector may be completely destroyed in the near future, not so much by military means as by economic destruction," the UAC notes.