Polish farmers protest Ukraine imports and EU regulations

Polish farmers staged blockades across the country to protest competition from Ukraine and heavy EU regulations, with Warsaw hinting it could impose new import bans on Ukrainian agricultural products.

Polish farmers staged blockades across the country to protest competition from Ukraine and heavy EU regulations, with Warsaw hinting it could impose new import bans on Ukrainian agricultural products.

Farmers protested at over 250 locations across Poland, blocking highways and border checkpoints while snarling traffic with columns of slow-moving tractors converging on major cities.

"We have no other choice," Marcin Wilgos, an organiser of the protest in Dorohusk at the border with Ukraine, told AFP next to a banner calling on the European Union to ban Ukrainian grain and sugar.

The farmers also called for an easing of environmental requirements already introduced by the EU as well as those included in the bloc's forthcoming Green Deal.

"They're talking about climate protection. But why should it be done at farmers' expense?" said Janusz Bialoskorski, a 62-year-old farmer protesting in Poznan, northwest Poland.

Hundreds of tractors descended on Poznan, with farmers honking horns and blocking the streets as others gave away fruit and vegetables to passers-by.

"We do not produce plastics polluting the oceans, we do not build cruise ships that pollute the environment nor do we fly to Davos on our jets," Mr. Bialoskorski told AFP.