The long queues of trucks at the border crossings with Ukraine are moving again. Transport companies and farmers from EU countries, who have been protesting for weeks against what they see as unfair treatment compared to their Ukrainian colleagues, are ready to talk. On Friday it looked as if farmers at the Polish Medyka border crossing would soon give up their protest. Up to 3,500 trucks wait at Polish border crossings and are stuck in traffic jams for up to a week. The queues stretch for kilometers.
But first, on Monday, the mayor of the small municipality of Dorohusk, which includes the largest Polish border crossing for freight traffic, ended the blockade with a decree. He also announced that he would no longer allow any new protests. On Thursday evening, Slovak transport companies voluntarily ended the blockade of the only truck border crossing between Slovakia and Ukraine. They respected the “requests of the security authorities,” said the members of the ÚNAS association.
The protest is not yet over
But it may also be because the Slovak MEP Katarína Roth Neveďalová presented the logistics industry’s concerns in the plenary session of the EU Parliament this week. “We thank the Honorable Member that someone in the EU Parliament is finally noticing us,” writes ÚNAS on Facebook. But the protest is not yet over.
The Polish transport companies started the border blockades – on November 6th. A bad time, Poland had just voted and everyone in Warsaw was busy forming a government. Although the ministers of agriculture and infrastructure from Mateusz Morawiecki’s 14-day government took care of this, their term of office expired on Monday as expected due to the PiS government’s lack of a majority. At the EU transport summit at the beginning of December it was only said that the EU was sticking to the exceptions for Ukrainian transport companies.
The demands of the Polish logisticians were soon joined by interest groups from the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia and Hungary, where there were already border blockades.
As a result of the war, Ukraine lost important sea transport routes
The freight forwarders from the EU complain about the exemption rules for Ukrainian entrepreneurs that the EU states decided in the summer of 2022. As a result of the Russian war of aggression, Ukraine has lost important transport routes, especially by sea, and more needs to be shifted to the road – in order to simplify the movement of goods, some regulations have been lifted and some bureaucracy has been eliminated.
The accusation from colleagues from the EU: Ukrainian companies are taking advantage of this and using their cheaper drivers to take orders away from Polish or Slovakian companies. It is said that this threatens our existence. In addition, according to the Slovakian Drivers’ Association, companies from third countries, such as Turkey, are also registering in Ukraine in order to benefit from the currently favorable conditions.
The EU entrepreneurs are also demanding that the Ukrainian government allow trucks without loads to leave Ukraine more quickly and are criticizing the very long waiting times at the border. But this also includes demands for an “end to price dumping”. For example, it should not be possible to employ subcontractors endlessly.
The new government under Donald Tusk is also taking the problem seriously. Immediately after being sworn in as infrastructure minister on Wednesday morning, Dariusz Klimczak from the conservative farmers’ party PSL drove to Lublin and met with transport companies there. They rated the conversation as “constructive”. Klimczak explained that there would still have to be many discussions with the EU and the Ukrainian side.
On Friday, the two new deputy ministers of agriculture traveled to Medyka, where farmers were protesting along with the freight forwarders. One of the ministers said their concerns were justified. Further discussions are being prepared at the Ministry of Agriculture in Warsaw. Farmers had already protested in the spring because the prices of goods from Ukraine were ruining their prices. Both the old and new governments are offering subsidies and the suspension of a tax increase.
Deliveries of aid and military supplies are supposed to be exempt from the blockades, but this does not always seem to work smoothly. Supply chains across Europe are suffering from the blockages. “The damage is already in the millions,” says Stefan Kägebein from the Eastern Committee of the German Economy Association. Longer delivery times also increase transport costs and lead to production interruptions. The blockades are jeopardizing the “slight recovery” of the Ukrainian economy.