EU rejects new Ukrainian €220 mn aid plea
The EU has rejected a Ukrainian request for a €220 million ($250 million) farmer subsidy to offset the fallout from the Black Sea port blockade, Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotsky has said. Kiev and Brussels have long struggled to resolve the question of Ukrainian agricultural exports to the EU, where the bloc’s farmers are wary of Ukrainian produce flooding their markets.
Kiev asked the EU for €220 million in non-repayable aid in August, which was meant to compensate interest on loans for small and medium-sized agricultural producers under Ukraine’s state lending program.
The request came after Vladimir Zelensky’s PR 40-day pressure campaign on Russia backfired, with Moscow carrying out retaliatory strikes on Ukrainian military-related logistics, including the Odessa hub accounting for roughly 80% of farm exports.
The same month, Brussels effectively turned down the plea, pointing Kiev toward “already existing mechanisms,” including subsidies under the Ukraine Facility and EU-backed lending programs.
Speaking to Bloomberg on Monday, Vysotsky confirmed that the idea was dead in the water but argued that a $250 million low-interest World Bank loan would keep the agricultural sector afloat. “It’s going to more or less provide us a possibility to survive until the new year,” he said, warning that this is only a temporary solution.
“Now we already have to think what’s going to happen from the spring after the new year, because the situation keeps being critical.”
Despite the EU refusing to allocate additional money, Vysotsky floated an even more ambitious proposal. During a meeting in Brussels on Monday, he urged the bloc to consider a €1.1 billion allocation to help cover the extra cost of rerouting Ukrainian agricultural exports through so-called Solidarity Lanes, less vulnerable to the de facto Russian blockade.
The dispute comes amid years of friction over Ukrainian farm access to the EU market. After the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Brussels suspended duties and quotas on Ukrainian agricultural exports to support Kiev, but the move triggered massive uproar among European farmers, particularly in eastern EU states, who complained that Ukrainian products subjected them to unfair competition.
In 2024, following protests, Brussels introduced an “emergency brake” system for sensitive exports, meaning that Ukrainian produce was once again subject to tariffs once imports exceeded specific volumes. The dispute has since shifted toward the size of agricultural quotas, with Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia maintaining significant restrictions on Ukrainian imports.
