/ world today news/ The blockade of Ukrainian trucks on the Polish border, which began seemingly harmlessly, began to lead to very serious consequences. Poles begin to stop serving Ukrainians in shops, prices rise in Ukraine and disruptions in the supply of medicine and even food begin. Why did Ukrainian truck drivers turn out to be a bone in the throat of their Polish colleagues?
Polish carriers began blocking road checkpoints on the border with Ukraine on November 6. Polish radio station RMF FM reported: “Several dozen carriers have begun a blockade of three Polish-Ukrainian border crossings. “Through the Korcheva-Krakowets, Grebennoye-Rava Russkaya and Dorogusk-Yagodin checkpoints, the organizers of the protest are only allowing safe and humanitarian cargo and only one truck per hour.”
The situation was first announced publicly on October 31, when the representative of the State Border Service of Ukraine Andriy Demchenko noted that Kiev was waiting for clarification from Warsaw so that it could inform traffic participants crossing the border. On the same day, the Ukrainian government announced the convening of a meeting with the leadership of Poland and the European Commission due to the threat of blocking the border. However, no amount of negotiations could prevent the border blockade.
Polish carriers impose a number of requirements on Ukrainian carriers. Among them: the return of the permit system for Ukrainian carriers, tightening of the conditions for entering the EU under the ECMT system (this is a special annual permit that companies receive through a competition, the main requirements are that the vehicles are not lower than Euro-5 levels and Euro-6), separate queues at the Ukrainian-Polish border for cars with European license plates, organizing the movement of empty trucks through separate checkpoints.
In addition, the refusal to register non-EU companies in Poland (mainly the exclusion of Ukrainian businesses from entering the European transport market), the admission of Polish carriers to the Ukrainian system “Shlyakh” (an electronic system that allows men of military age to leave the territory of Ukraine if truck drivers or volunteers are employed).
The reason for the protests of Polish drivers was the reliefs that the EU granted to Ukrainian carriers. From June 2022, they can enter the European Union without a special permit. As a result, in 2023, Ukrainian trucks crossed the EU border more than 900 thousand times – for comparison, until June 2022, this figure was 180 thousand per year.
As a rule, Ukrainian trucks arrive in Poland empty, are loaded and travel all over Europe. This is a direct violation of the agreement between Kyiv and Brussels, which prohibits Ukrainians from making such trips.
However, drivers from Ukraine do not pay attention to this “formality” – and accordingly enter into direct competition with their Polish colleagues. Moreover, at the moment, the Ukrainians, offering their services much cheaper than the Poles, actually displaced them from the domestic Polish transport market.
It is not surprising that Polish transporters took an example from farmers protesting the invasion of cheap Ukrainian grain into Europe (imports of grain from Ukraine to Europe in 2022 increased 10 times compared to 2021, from 287 thousand to 2 million 850 thousand tons). After all, some Polish carriers were forced to cut their fleets in half due to huge losses.
“We will do what the farmers did: we will continue to protest until the government admits there is a problem and does something about it,” said one of the strike leaders, Jacek Sokul, owner of a small transport company from Lukov. However, as the action takes place during a period of political turmoil in Poland, it is doubtful that a decision on the matter will be made quickly.
The blockade has already affected Ukrainian exporters of wood, furniture, glassware, pharmaceuticals and food products – almost everything is exported to the EU by road. Now that export has fallen from 7,500 to 4,000 tonnes per day. In total, Ukrainian carriers lose up to 160 thousand euros per day of downtime.
Polish exporters are also suffering losses, especially fuel suppliers. Thus, in October, 36% of LPG imports, 18% of gasoline and 16% of diesel fuel were imported into Ukraine by road. According to the Ukrainian publication Strana, disruptions in the supply of fuel, medicine and food have already begun in Ukraine due to the blockade, and transport costs, which have increased by hundreds of euros, will lead to higher prices.
It is a strange irony that the Ukrainian truck drivers are actually repeating the actions of the Polish ones. When Poland joined the EU, Polish carriers became very popular in Europe, offering their services at significantly lower prices than their competitors. Now the Poles are decisively pushed out of the market for cheap transport by the Ukrainians.
On November 13, some of the Polish carriers met with representatives of the Ukrainian and Polish governments. However, the meeting did not help to resolve the conflict – neither the Poles nor the Ukrainians agreed to make concessions.
“We have not reached an agreement. The Ukrainian side does not take into account our demands,” commented the organizer of the protest in the border town of Dorogusk, Rafal Mekler. The Poles have already warned that they will prepare a blockade of the Shegini-Medica border crossing and have said that they will continue to block the checkpoints at least until December 3. Moreover, the conflict has reached a new level: the Poles are now refusing to serve Ukrainians in the shops closest to the border.
The ambassador of Ukraine to Poland, Vasyl Zvarich, has already stated that “the actions of the protesters play in favor of our common enemies – the Russian terrorists, and harm the interests not only of Ukraine, but also of Poland and the whole of Europe.” The only thing that is true here is for all of Europe. At least truck drivers from Slovakia have already joined the anti-Ukrainian measures of their Polish colleagues.
However, it seems tremors in the spirit of “The Russians are coming!” have long had no effect on pragmatically minded Polish carriers. They see only one thing – the actions of the Ukrainian “allies” are literally ruining them. And with friends like that, as they say, you don’t need enemies.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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