Farmers have been blocking border checkpoints along the border with the war-torn neighbor for weeks, protesting what they say is unfair competition for goods entering the Polish market from Ukraine.
Relations between Ukraine and Poland, one of Kyiv’s staunchest supporters in the war with Russia, have become strained over border blockades and a grain dispute.
“It can be said that there has been a certain convergence between the respective positions, but of course […] everyone is fighting for themselves,” Polish Minister of Agriculture Czeslaw Siekierski told the AFP news agency.
“Everything is still ahead of us. The negotiations will definitely not end today,” he said before Wednesday’s meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Mykola Solski.
Krzysztof Paszyk, a lawmaker from the ruling coalition, told the Polish news agency PAP that both countries are “on the verge of solving these issues.”
He indicated that the bilateral talks between the governments scheduled for Thursday in Warsaw will focus on agriculture, trade, economy and military support for Ukraine.
The Russian invasion that began in 2022 severely disrupted Ukraine’s agricultural sector, with many of its Black Sea export centers blocked and large tracts of farmland rendered unusable by hostilities.
In order to help Kyiv economically, in 2022 the European Union decided to abolish tariffs on Ukrainian goods transported in transit on the roads of the 27-nation bloc.
However, due to logistical problems, a large part of Ukraine’s exported grain is concentrated in EU member Poland, which reduces prices for local producers.
