Bulgaria expects that a decision on a common EU approach to the import of farm produce from Ukraine will be taken in the coming days, which will make it possible for individual member states to lift their unilateral bans, Bulgaria’s caretaker Minister of Agriculture, Food and Forestry Yavor Gechev said after the Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting in Luxembourg on Tuesday. At the meeting, the ministers failed to reach a unanimous decision to lift the ban on imports from Ukraine.

“We do not have time to react, because the new harvest is coming soon. We already know that the solidarity corridors are not working as they were designed. New measures are needed. We should also think about guarantee funds to secure the markets of Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary”, Minister Gechev emphasized. In his words, the amount of sunflower available on Bulgarian territory is more than this country can process and that the amount of cereals is more than the country can export. “We have several billion worth of produce, which we don’t know if we will be able to sell until the new harvest”, Yavor Gechev noted.