EC likely to approve second tranche of aid for farmers next week

The European Commission is expected to approve next week a second tranche of assistance for farmers, who have suffered losses caused by the import of Ukrainian grain, Poland's permanent representative to the EU has said.

"The EC, the EU's executive arm, has been meeting its obligations," Ambassador Andrzej Sadoś said on Friday.

The EC's assistance is planned at EUR 100 million, including nearly EUR 40 million for Polish farmers.

Some of the grain exports remain in Ukraine's neighbouring countries, including Poland, and farmers have complained that they have problems selling their own grain due to full warehouses and decreasing prices.

On April 4, the EC published a regulation under which three countries, namely, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania were granted aid to the tune of EUR 56.3 million. Poland was allocated EUR 29.5 million from this amount.

"The payment of the first EU tranche is now being prepared," Sadoś said, adding that farmers would also receive state compensations.

"It is an additional 100 percent in the case of the first tranche, and an additional 200 percent which will go with the second tranche," the ambassador continued.

Mass media reported on Friday that the EU agriculture committee, which was to approve assistance worth EUR 100 million for farmers from Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, had cancelled its meeting since Slovakia and Hungary had not yet lifted its restrictions on imports of Ukrainian agri produce.

Poland lifted its ban on imports of agricultural products from Ukraine on May 3, after the EC had set restrictions on imports of Ukrainian agri produce.