Polish farmers, who are planning to block a road on the Lithuanian border for a week starting Friday, will check what is being transported across the border in trucks, Karol Pieczynski, the organizer of the protest, said on Monday.
“The protest should start at 10 a.m. on March 1. It will not be a complete blockade of the (former) border checkpoint, but we as farmers, together with the authorities from the Polish side, would like to check what is being transported in trucks, paying special attention to vehicles that have the potential to transport agricultural products. Of course, this does not apply to private vehicles,” Pieczynski told LRT Radio through an interpreter.
“The issue of blocking the Lithuanian border arose when thinking about how to increase pressure on the Polish government over possible not entirely legal shipments of agricultural products between Poland and Lithuania,” he said. “I ask for understanding because we just want to draw attention.”
Ausrys Macijauskas, head of the Lithuanian Association of Grain Growers, says that Polish farmers’ suspicions that Ukrainian grain shipped from Poland to Lithuania is transported back to Poland or is processed and re-exported as Lithuanian produce are justified.
“Polish farmers suspect that the grain turns around and goes back. We have information that Ukrainian grain is milled in Lithuania and flour, supposedly made from Lithuanian grain, is shipped to Poland,” he told BNS. “I know for sure that Ukrainian grain arrives in Lithuania, but the Lithuanian Customs do not know this.”
The entry of Ukrainian grain into Lithuania is not recorded in official statistics, according to Macijauskas.
“People see what is unloaded in warehouses and mills. They see the numbers and where the produce has come from. But they cannot check the documents; they do not have that right. But they see and they take photos, videos and so on,” he said.
The head of the association added that both Polish farmers’ indignation and discrepancies between reality and statistics indicate that somewhere in Lithuanian institutions, work is not being done properly.
Polish farmers are planning to set up two new blockades from March 1: at the Swiecko border crossing with Germany and on the road at the former Kalvarija-Budzisko border checkpoint. The blockade is planned to last about a week.
Polish farmers launched a new wave of protests last Tuesday, blocking around 100 roads to the Ukrainian border and forcibly opening two Ukrainian railcars at the Medyka border crossing.
Source: BNS
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