The movement of trucks at the Shehyni-Medyka border checkpoint between Ukraine and Poland has been restored, Ukraine's State Border Guard Service reported on Feb. 10.
Polish farmers launched a blockade at the Medyka-Shehyni crossing with Ukraine on Feb. 9. According to border control, the protest ended at 11:30 a.m. local time on Feb. 10 and 220 trucks are now expected to enter Ukraine.
The farmers announced the protests in advance, citing an alleged lack of action by Warsaw and Brussels to address the influx of Ukrainian goods. Earlier, Polish carriers and farmers blocked four crossings between November 2023 and January to protest Ukrainian imports and liberalization of permits for Ukrainian truckers.
The protests center around imports of agricultural goods from Ukraine, which Polish agricultural groups claim present unfair competition to their own businesses. Warsaw has banned the import of grain and several other products from Ukraine in 2023, but other items, such as sugar or poultry, continue to raise worries among Polish farmers.
Polish farmers agreed to suspend their initial blockade on Jan. 6 after Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Siekierski agreed to meet some of their demands, including corn subsidies, increasing liquidity loans, and keeping agricultural tax at the 2023 level.
A new wave of protests erupted on Jan. 24, blocking roads across Poland again in connection to imports from Ukraine and other non-EU countries.
The Solidarity trade union announced at the beginning of February that they would block roads and border crossings with Ukraine between Feb. 9 and March 10 because of the supposed "passivity of the Polish authorities" and of the EU in solving the import issue.
