Polish truck drivers who have been blocking some border crossings with Ukraine since November will suspend their protests until March 1 after signing an agreement with the Government, as announced on Tuesday by the Polish Minister of Infrastructure. Truckers are demanding that the European Union restore a system whereby Ukrainian companies need permits to operate in the bloc, as do European truckers entering Ukraine.
"The result of the agreement will be the interruption of protests at the road border crossings in three cities: Korczowa, Hrebenne and Dorohusk," declared Infrastructure Minister Dariusz Klimczak. "The protest will stop until March 1," he added.
"We have agreed on certain conditions, we will give the Government time to work, since this is a new Government," Tomasz Borkowski, of the Committee for the Protection of Transporters and Transport Entrepreneurs, told the Reuters agency.
But the truckers' group has insisted that they are not ending the mobilization. Edyta Ozygala, one of the leaders of the truckers' protest in Dorohusk, said the action could be renewed at any time if the agreed conditions are not fully met. "If the effects are not satisfactory, we will return," she said.
The main points of the agreement include the follow-up to the solutions developed jointly by Poland and Ukraine to alleviate the situation of EU-registered drivers who are in Ukraine, as well as talks with the EU on its agreement with Ukraine and dialogues with the Commission European Union on financial support for Polish transport companies.
The agreement also provides for more road controls to prevent Ukrainian truck drivers from carrying out services not provided for in the EU-Ukraine agreement. However, there has been no mention of the claimed return of the cross-border permit system.
Before the war, the permit system allowed the European Union to keep the number of Polish and Ukrainian drivers crossing its common border more or less the same. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the European Union suspended this system to support the Ukrainian economy, which was experiencing difficulties due to the blockade of its main export and import routes through the Black Sea.
Protests against the suspension of cross-border permits have ended up damaging Ukraine, which claims that the blockade of Polish truckers has caused serious economic losses and hampered its war effort. On the other hand, Polish transporters defend that they cannot compete against the massive entry of goods from the Ukrainian market.
