Importation of food from Ukraine remains a political dispute over the Polish market: Brussels wants to end unilateral bans, and Kiev has been talking to Warsaw since 11 August about the greater transit of cereals through Polish ports. Buying prices, warehouses and the safety of thousands of farms are at stake, not an abstract EU procedure.
Brussels pushes, farmers remember the crisis
The dispute over food imports from Ukraine returns at the worst minute for the Polish village: at harvests, full warehouses and tense market. Radio Marya stated that Brussels is pushing the Polish government to remove the unilateral embargo on grain from Ukraine. In parallel, Kiev talks with Warsaw about the retention and transit of cereals through the Polish territory, and further through ports on the Baltic Sea.
So this is not a method conversation for logistics. It is simply a decision whether the Polish State can separate between helping a neighbour assaulted by Russia and giving up protecting its own farmers. Solidarity cannot mean a blind beginning of the market, especially after the experience of the years 2022-2023, erstwhile Polish producers paid the price for a badly guarded inflow of goods.
End of war relief tariff
The European Union suspended customs duties and quotas for products from Ukraine after Russian full-scale aggression. This peculiar scheme, known as autonomous trade measures, has been in operation since June 2022 and has been renewed in subsequent years. The European Commission itself states that full liberalisation expired on 5 June 2025.and later trade was to return to the framework of the Association Agreement and the upgraded DCFTA.
The Polish Ministry of Agriculture informed on 4 June 2025 that from 6 June there would be a return to pre-war liberalisation rules, including duty-free tariff quotas for delicate agricultural goods. The hotel pointed out that Poland opposes excessive liberalisationif its effects hit the interests of Polish farmers.
Then Brussels and Kiev closed the longer trade framework. The EU Council indicates that the revised DCFTA Agreement entered into force on 29 October 2025.. The Commission presents it as a permanent trade mechanics with a safeguard clause and a gradual adaptation of Ukrainian standards to the EU. So much for theory. In practice, front-end countries inactive fear that a common trade policy will be a convenient screen for costs passed on to farmers.
Kiev is looking for ports, Poland must defender the market
The fresh component of the case is logistical force following Russian attacks on ports and transport infrastructure in Ukraine. On 11 August 2026, the Government of Ukraine stated that the Minister of Agriculture Taras Wysocki spoke to representatives of the Polish Embassy about alternate export routes, crop retention and farmers' support. The communication lists ports in Gdańsk, Szczecin, Świnoujście and Gdynia as possible export service points. The Ukrainian side besides acknowledged that the retention capacity deficit may scope between 7.5-8 million tonnes and 11 million tonnes in the autumn.
These are numbers you must not underestimate. If the deficiency of magazines in Ukraine is solved by moving the problem to Poland, the Polish village will again become a buffer of another's policy. Transit can be allowed, but only as a sealed transit: monitored, sealed, accounted for and subordinated to the capacity of Polish infrastructure. Neither the tonne for export should vanish along the way on the home market.
Food sovereignty is not a slogan
Brussels looks at the issue through the single marketplace and the EU's commercial competences. Poland needs to look more closely: through food security, farm income, jobs in processing and village's ability to last the next season. If import or badly secured transit lowers buying-in prices below production costs, the account shall be paid by the farmer, his household and the local economy.
Ukraine has the right to search export routes. Poland has the right to set conditions. This is not anti-Ukrainianism, it is simply a average policy of the state that remembers that the first work of the government in Warsaw is to defend Polish citizens. Aid in the war with Russia does not require surrender to Brussels or consent to chaos in agricultural trade.
The government should say 3 things clearly. First: the embargo on products is delicate until there are real guarantees for the Polish market. Second: transit through Polish ports only under full control of the services, with representatives of farmers in consultation. Third: no decisions behind closed doors, due to the fact that the Polish village has already paid erstwhile for another people's experiments.
If the State does not defender its own food market, it loses part of its sovereignty. And sovereignty begins very specifically: from field, warehouse, acquisition price and the Polish farmer's right to fair competition.
Source: Radio Maryja, European Commission, EU Council, Ministry of Agriculture and agrarian Development, Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.
Source: Radio Maryja
