This is the best summary I could come up with:
In the eastern member states of the EU, however, the issue has long assumed a very different importance: It is now a matter of domestic policy and the subject of a power struggle with Brussels.
But Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s party got a rude awakening last spring when furious farmers across the country took to the streets to protest the government’s agricultural policy and oppose the transit of Ukrainian grain across Polish territory.
Although Ludovit Odor’s pro-Western interim government has few real powers, it obviously wants to avoid driving more voters into Fico’s arms by permitting the unrestricted import of Ukrainian grain.
While Orban is targeting first and foremost his domestic supporters with such crude statements, it is likely that Hungary’s decision to maintain the import ban on Ukrainian grain is also an attempt to win over his former partners for an anti-Brussels alliance.
With his pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine stance, Orban has fallen out not only with the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but also with Poland over the past 18 months and is largely isolated in the region in terms of its foreign policy.
Although alone — and not the individual member states — it is responsible for trade policy and import bans within the EU, the European Commission has said it wants to analyze the measures taken by Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania.
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He accused the EU of representing American and not European interests, saying that Ukrainian grain is actually “a commercial product originating from a territory, which, possibly, has long been in the US’s hands.”
Orbán, the US is a significantly larger wheat and corn producer than Ukraine is. If we had a cunning plot to somehow make money off Hungarian wheat consumers all this time, why wouldn’t we have been selling our grain?
Afaik (from a union leader in my country) farmers are saying they can’t compete with Ukrainian grain because everything from the seeds, fertilizer, pesticides and even the diesel they use is highly subsidized by either the US or the EU and local farmers can’t compete and it’s driving them to starvation and suicide.
If you are in a EU country, then the local agriculture sector is also heavily subsidized by the EU. Agriculture subsidies is the single largest part of the entire EU’s budget.
Yeah but what he’s saying is that even with the subsidies they get they’re unable to sell at a profit, and it’s all to do with much cheaper grain coming from Ukraine. If you choose to believe this or not that’s up to you, I’m just relaying the message because I haven’t seen this being talked about (and ofc I personally tend to believe him). The country in question is Romania, and according to him it’s the subsidies they get, the pesticide and fertilizers they’re allowed to use, are all crap compared to other European countries whose politicians negotiated much better deals for their farmers than our so called “leaders”.
My source is this youtube interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m41LZVjulA&t - but unfortunately it’s in Romanian and doesn’t have subtitles.Can you imagine the insane food prices without it?
If anyone’s interested in subsidies program name, it’s AGRI-Ukraine.
