It is not customary to talk about this, but Polish fruit growers, on the one hand, demand a ban raspberry imports from Ukraine, but at the same time, they do not want Ukraine to ban imports of other Polish fruits or food products.
At the time of signing the Association Agreement with the EU, Ukraine agreed to discriminatory trade rules with the EU, when the European market was protected from Ukrainian products by quotas and import duties, and, in response, Ukraine provided almost unlimited access for Polish products to its market.
And as Ukrainian farmers are harvesting their crops while enduring round-the-clock shelling, sometimes losing their loved ones, Polish farmers are happily counting their profits by selling fresh apples to those who launch rockets and shells at Ukrainians – ie Russian consumers. Moreover, these apples are harvested in Polish gardens mainly by Ukrainians! For some reason, Polish growers do not organize any pickets and protests about such hypocritical approaches to business, and they also do not block the gates of packing centers where apples are being prepared for shipment to Russia through Belarus.
By the way, it’s not just about the apples. Imagine that such a small country like Belarus is the second largest market for Polish fruits! Little Belarus, with a population of 9 million people, bought more fruits from Poland in the first four months of 2023 than the Netherlands, France, Belgium, or the UK! In addition to apples, Poland also actively sells to the aggressors the pears, strawberries, frozen fruits, and berries, and also helps Spanish suppliers with re-exports of their citrus fruits, because oranges and tangerines are also on the list of Poland’s top export positions in the direction of aggressor countries, EastFruit notes.
Moreover, apple exports alone to Belarus in the first 4 months of 2023 brought Polish farmers $15 million in revenues, which is 2.3 times more than in the same period of 2022! Do you believe that all these apples were sold to the small Belarus, from the territory of which, by the way, rockets are also flying to the Ukrainian cities?
Let’s say an even more interesting thing – for apple growers in Poland, it is Russia that remains the number one market! More Polish apples were sent to Russia in the first four months of 2023 than to Egypt or any other country in the world! Every month Poland ships about 10,000 tons of apples to the Russian market.
For more information: east-fruit.com