2023-12-18 19:50 update: 2023-12-19, 16:55
Photo PAP/Wojtek Jargiło
Polish lorry drivers have resumed their blockade of the Dorohusk border crossing at the Polish-Ukrainian frontier in south-eastern Poland.
Last Monday, Wojciech Sawa, the head of the local municipality, decided to disband the demonstration in front of the Dorohusk crossing. The protesting drivers immediately applied for a new permit which he also refused to grant but as a district court in Lublin annulled his decision, the truckers could resume their protest.
The number of trucks waiting at the Dorohusk border crossing on Monday amounted to around 1,800, and the queue was 46 kilometres long.
"The protest staged by hauliers is the transport Gordian knot which had been getting tighter because of the lack of actions by our predecessors," Infrastructure Minister Dariusz Klimczak told a Polsat News private television programme of Monday, adding that "that is why it would be very difficult to find a solution today."
Klimczak became the infrastructure minister last week as the Donald Tusk government was sworn in by President Andrzej Duda on Wednesday.
Referring to the ongoing EC-Ukraine meeting, which is being attended by Poland, Klimczak said that it was the first opportunity to speak about the EU-Ukraine agreement on transport liberalisation.
"We know that this agreement is a bone of contention and the cause of the ongoing protest," he added.
Klimczak also said that he would meet with his Ukrainian counterpart in the coming days and that that he had been holding talks with the protesting truckers.
"We have been seeking a common denominator in order to at least suspend the protest," he concluded.
Polish truckers, who started their protest on November 6, are demanding the introduction of commercial permits for Ukrainian companies carrying goods, except for those carrying humanitarian aid and military equipment.
They also demand that operating permits should be suspended in the case of companies that were set up after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
Trucks waiting to get into Ukraine at other border crossings in south-eastern Poland also have to wait in long queues. (PAP)
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