Truck drivers have to plan for a waiting time of twelve days or more if they want to transport goods from Ukraine to the EU via Poland. The reason: stricter Polish border controls. Some suspect a calculation.
Cable harnesses, cable branches, cable strands – Markus Kollau describes entire mountains of cables that his company produces in the Ukraine and that urgently need to be brought through Poland to Germany.
Kollau is commercial manager at Kromberg and Schubert. The company from Baden-Württemberg employs 8,000 people in Ukraine who produce cables for German car manufacturers – for around 3,000 cars per day.
The problem: Deliveries get stuck at the border with Poland. Kollau says he is not sure whether production can continue in Ukraine: “Now the jobs in Ukraine are threatened – not by the war, but by the waiting times for freight trucks at the EU border, which now number twelve days or longer.”
Twelve days waiting time at the border
Since October, waiting times at the border with Poland have increased continuously – from originally two to five days to now often eleven or twelve. The Polish side is responsible, says Kollau. Despite the rush, the Polish authorities did not provide any additional staff. In some cases, even less is being processed now than before.
In fact, controls on the Ukrainian-Polish border have been tightened. Not because of the cables, but because of the grain and corn. In the spring, Polish farmers protested against Ukrainian competition. Poland had urged the EU to stop imports and is now continuing it on its own: import no, transit to the west yes. The result: many, lengthy checks that can only be shortened with tricks.
of Poland Ministry of Transport does not comment
“What we’re doing now, but we can’t keep doing this forever, is that we’re reloading the goods from the large trucks we normally drive into sprinters that are waiting in a different queue,” says Kollau. They wouldn’t have to wait that long and the goods could still get into the EU. But it’s expensive, because you need around 20 small vans for a truckload, says Kollau.
Inquiries to the Polish Ministry of Transport as to whether border traffic is perhaps even being deliberately delayed, as other entrepreneurs have complained, remain unanswered.
Polish truck drivers go on strike
Polish truck drivers have also been on strike since the beginning of the week – including blockades at individual border crossings. They in turn accuse the Ukrainian side of discriminating against them when it comes to processing at the border and of causing long waiting times. Instead, Ukrainian truck drivers have had easier access to Poland since the beginning of the war, without the previously necessary transport permits. Now they are competing with Polish companies, says freight forwarder Tomasz Borkowski:
In 2021, before the outbreak of war, Poland issued 160,000 permits to Ukrainian companies. This year, just until September, Ukrainian companies have already made over 880,000 trips across the Polish border. […] We want to defend our market, we want transport permits to be reintroduced.
Mutual accusations
But nobody wants to be responsible. Kiev refers to Warsaw, Warsaw to the EU. Whoever resolves the dispute, Kollau says it has to be done quickly. Because if the goods do not come across the border from Ukraine into the EU, then automobile plants in Germany would soon also come to a standstill.