(CNN) Farmers in Central and Eastern Europe protested this week against the impact of cheap Ukrainian grain imports, which undercut domestic prices and hurt sales of local producers.
According to local news outlets, protesters blocked traffic and border checkpoints with tractors along the Romania-Bulgaria border to prevent Ukrainian trucks from entering their country.
Local growers say they can’t compete with the price of Ukrainian grain and have demanded compensation from the European Commission.
Often referred to as the “breadbasket of Europe” due to the massive amounts of grain it produces, Ukraine had a blockade of Black Sea ports by Russia following the February 2022 invasion.
Fearing that the situation was “threatening global food security,” the European Commission set up so-called “solidarity lanes” in May to facilitate exports.
The commission also temporarily abolished all tariffs and quotas on Ukraine’s exports, allowing an abundance of cheap Ukrainian grain to flow to Europe.
“The Romanian farmer, geographically European, practically alone,” read a banner at the protest rally in Bucharest.
According to the European Farmers’ Union, this has led to “enormous market distortions” in neighboring countries Copa Cogeca.
Pekka Pesonen, Secretary-General of Copa-Cogeca, told CNN: “The EU needs to deal with the serious consequences that open borders and uncontrolled imports of some agricultural commodities have caused to neighboring EU member states.”
“We call for stabilization of import volumes to align with our EU capacity to accommodate the flow of goods,” he added.
Anger grew after the European Commission announced a draft decision to extend duty-free and quota-free imports of Ukrainian grain until June 2024, prompting Poland’s Agriculture Minister Henryk Kowalcyzk to resign from his post on Wednesday.
In his resignation statement, Kowalczyk said the Polish government – along with Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria – had submitted an application to the European Commission to “activate the safeguard clause in the area of duty-free and quota goods”. free import of grain from Ukraine.”
“Bulgaria is in solidarity with Ukraine, but there is a local flood in the agricultural market, because instead of export corridors, our countries are becoming warehouses,” said Bulgarian Minister of Agriculture Yavor Gechev.
The National Association of Bulgarian Grain Producers said: “Bulgarian farmers’ warehouses are full of stagnant products. There is no market for Bulgarian grain.”
According to them, 40% of last year’s grain and sunflower crops remain unsold.
Romanian farmers are also feeling the strain. At protests in Bucharest on Friday, Liliana Piron, executive director of the League of Romanian Agricultural Producers’ Associations, said farmers had “reached a point where they feel they can no longer bear the costs” of “unfair competition” from Ukraine.
“We are less than three months away from the new harvest and the risk is real that the produce we will have ready this season cannot be sold at prices above the cost of production,” Piron said, according to RadioFree Europe .
“We will see a chain of bankruptcies of Romanian farmers,” she added.
In response to the growing unrest, the European Commission last month proposed 56.3 million euros (about US$61.3 million) in support measures for Bulgarian, Polish and Romanian farmers “to compensate affected farmers for the economic losses caused by to compensate for increased imports”.
“Trade disruptions caused by Russian aggression should not be at the expense of farmers from neighboring countries,” the commission said in a statement.
CNN’s Alex Hardie and Antonia Mortensen contributed coverage.