Polish farmers end protest at Lithuanian border
Farmers from north-eastern Poland have ended their protest at the border with Lithuania, where they monitored trucks coming to Poland.
The demonstration lasted since last Friday and took a different form from the ones at the border with Ukraine, where protestors have been blocking transports of agricultural products between the two countries, bringing many border crossings to a virtual standstill.
Karol Pieczynski, the organiser of the protest near Budzisk, told PAP that the farmers did not block the traffic from Lithuania.
"The protest consisted of looking at the coordinated action of the border guard controlling lorries entering Poland," he said.
According to the protestors, their main objective was to inspect and restrict the transport of Ukrainian grain to Lithuania, which then returns to Poland.
Pieczynski argued that: "Ukrainian grain goes through Poland to Lithuania and returns to Poland and the European market in the form of flour and wheat bran.
"This is currently taking place within the limits of the law," he said.
The farmers expect the Lithuanian side to ban grain imports from Ukraine and implement grain transit regulations similar to those in Poland.
In Pieczynski's view, the Russian grain is also entering Poland and the EU through Lithuania, mainly from Latvia.
He also said that in his opinion it was good that a few days ago the prime ministers of Poland and Lithuania agreed on a common position regarding the proposal for the EU to impose an embargo on agri-food products from Russia and Belarus.
The protests have been taking place in Poland since November last year and coincided with farmers' protests across the European Union.
In Poland, they accumulated mainly around the border with Ukraine and the country's capital Warsaw. The demands of the Polish farmers include abandoning the EU's Green Deal programme, which aims to make farming more eco-friendly, sealing the borders against the influx of agri-food products from outside the EU and defending animal husbandry in Poland. (PAP)
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