The European Parliament adopted by 347 votes to 117, with 99 abstentions, amendments to the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on temporary trade-liberalisation measures supplementing trade concessions applicable to Ukrainian products under the Association Agreement between the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community and their Member States, of the one part, and Ukraine, of the other part.
The matter was referred back to the committee responsible for inter-institutional negotiations.
As a reminder, the proposal for a Regulation extends for a further year from their current expiry date (5 June 2024) the EU trade liberalisation measures in force for products from Ukraine, which were initially adopted in May 2022 and extended (a first time) in May 2023.
The proposal provides for the temporary suspension of all outstanding customs duties under Title IV of the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine establishing a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA). This concerns two categories of products: fruits and vegetables subject to the entry-price system, and agricultural products and processed agricultural products which are subject to tariff-rate quotas.
The proposal introduces strengthened safeguard mechanisms to prevent and counteract adverse market effects in the EU Member States. For particularly sensitive products, namely poultry, eggs and sugar, the regulation introduces an automatic safeguard, which ensures that duty free imports of those products will be capped at 2022-2023 levels.
With these amendments, Parliament wishes to introduce an automatic safeguard for wheat, barley, oats, maize, eggs, poultry, sugar and honey products that is activated if quantities imported pursuant to this Regulation exceed the arithmetic mean of quantities in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
The Commission, within 14 days (instead of 21) and after informing the Committee on Safeguards set up by Regulation (EU) 2015/478, could reintroduce the corresponding tariff quota for these products, suspended until 31 December 2024.