Polish truckers are blocking Ukraine from getting cargo trucks across the Polish border, leaving everything from food to tourniquets to military pickup trucks stuck in Poland — in the middle of a war!
Are there any limits to the hardship we will impose on the warn torn Ukraine, while their soldiers are killed and their cities are bombed?
Well, this is a classic trade war and sadly largely imposed by #Ukraine, not #Poland. In short:
EU transport companies are subject to numerous safety, environmental and labour protection requirements, their costs are 50% higher than Ukrainian.
2022 Ukraine-EU agreement granted Ukrainian drivers emergency access to transports between Ukraine and EU (this “between” part is important). The agreement did not grant them full access to EU market, especially cargos inside EU.
Ukrainian drivers started abusing this and running intra-EU cargos on such a scale (10x increase to previous years) that hundreds of EU (mostly Polish) companies were literally forced to shut down due to lack of orders.
Humanitarian and military cargos are not blocked in principle. Reports of this came from initial checks done by the protesters who inspected the trucks on their own and stopped dubious loads based on common sense. There were cases when Ukrainian trucks came to the border declaring as humanitarian, but with obviously faked documents and loads such as luxury cars, dog & cat food etc which were stopped.
Right now Polish police, customs and tax authorities participate in the checks, which means they instantly check customs declarations of the arriving trucks against the online databases. Fake “humanitarian” declarations are revealed immediately and after a few Ukrainian drivers were charged with falsification of documents, the number of such DIY “humanitarian” trucks dropped.
On Polish side there’s 3000-5000 trucks waiting to enter Ukraine and that’s called “blockade”. As anyone can check on Ukrainian https://echerha.gov.ua/statistics there’s 20’000 trucks waiting to exit Ukraine and that’s called “normal situation”. Bribe extortion was notorious on the Ukrainian side of the border. Ukraine recently made some prominent arrests of customs who faked “humanitarian” documents for bribes but this is likely the tip of an iceberg.
The issue has been idiotically neglected by both Ukrainian and Polish governments for over six months. Ukrainian government first denied any problem even exists, then it resorted to emotional arguments, then made some half-baked fixed on the border. Still, they objectively can’t do anything about Ukrainian drivers abusing the intra-EU cargos.
Polish government neglected grain sales checks which led to the summer grain blockades when Ukrainian farming corporations flooded Polish market with cheap grain which was allowed for transit through EU, not for sale inside EU.
In the same way, EU governments neglected road checks which resulted in an atmosphere of impunity for Ukrainian drivers doing intra-EU runs. These checks would be effective if executed on a wide scale - Slovak road police checks last month indicated 60% of Ukrainian trucks were running illegal intra-EU cargos. Of course, these checks would be not necessary and the blockade would not happen if Ukrainian drivers didn’t abuse their access in the first place.
Road checks are a complex topics because in many EU countries the transport inspection is a separate, civilian structure that only works in business hours and no weekends. This created an obvious loophole for the cheaters Overall, nobody seems to have expected the problem and while the protesters alerted about the scale of abuse since May 2023, the relevant governments seem to have believed that the issue “will resolve itself” without any intervention. It didn’t, which is why we now have the blockade.
European Commission who negotiated the 2022 deal doesn’t seem to see any problem with hundreds of thousands of EU drivers losing jobs as result of illegal and unfair competition and says it the deal can be renegotiated next year. They just insist on stopping the blockade with police methods. The reason why Eastern European governments like Poland are reluctant to do so is that the protesters are mostly right and simply beating them with batons would likely result in mass protests across the country and dramatic social conflict.
The blockade has been started by Polish trucker Mekler who also happens to be a supporter of alt-right “Konfederacja”. Their postulates however are very to the point and for they avoided any criticism of Ukraine, just focusing on the unfair competition. The protest was later joined by farmers and even drivers who ran humanitarian cargos to Ukraine on their own initiative in early 2022. Then transport companies from other Eastern European countries joined.
In private discussions Ukrainians quote “free market”, “we just earn money any way possible” and “if nobody is stopping us, it means it’s allowed”. When confronted about unfair competition, faking documents, corruption they simply switch to emotional arguments about “being at war” etc. Same when I ask about economical consequences of this abuse for the EU drivers and now also for themselves (due to the blockade).
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