EU Council, Parliament Agree to Extend Duty Relief for Ukrainian Goods

The Council of the EU and the European Parliament "provisionally" agreed March 20 to renew until June 5, 2025, the suspension of import duties and quotas on goods from Ukraine for another year, the council announced. The council and parliament will next need to formally approve the agreement for the one-year extension.

Along with the renewal, the council and Parliament also decided to "reinforce" protections on certain agricultural products by "beefing up safeguards" already included in the liberalizing measures for Ukraine. They said a "new automatic safeguard" will be added for certain "sensitive" products, including poultry, eggs, sugar, oats, maize, groats and honey.

The safeguard would "oblige the Commission to reintroduce tariff-rate quotas if imports of" the agricultural products "exceed the arithmetic mean of quantities imported in 2022 and 2023." The council also said the EU is "shortening" the "time period for activation of the automatic safeguard (from 21 to 14 days)."