“The most painful moment is that we’re not just going back to quotas on the seven product groups under the ATM, but to the terms of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) established by the Association Agreement signed in 2014," she explained.
"That agreement includes around 30 quotas. In addition to wheat, corn, and sugar, we’ll now be limited on tomato paste, dairy products, ethanol, pork, beef… After June 5, we’ll face far more restrictions.”
She predicted that farmers involved in value-added production chains — like converting wheat into flour — will be particularly affected.
“That’s because raw wheat usually takes up the entire quota," Avramenko noted.
"But the quota also includes processed wheat products like flour, groats, broken grain, husks. As a result, those products won’t be exported in the same volumes as before.”
Dairy producers, tomato growers, and egg farmers will also face income losses.
“In the end, surplus products left inside Ukraine will likely drop in price because of oversupply," she predicted.
"An unprepared producer can’t quickly adapt their production or reorient their exports. So, domestic prices may fall slightly, while in the EU, they could rise.”
Avramenko added that the European Commission had already warned in May of last year that the trade liberalization will not be extended, and that the focus will instead shift to updating the trade portion of the Association Agreement.
“So I wouldn’t call this a sudden shift," she concluded.
"It’s just that the entire Ukrainian agricultural sector wanted to believe we’d retain unlimited access to the EU market. But in reality, we should have started preparing for the worst-case scenario a year ago.”
Poland will cancel the EU's ATM mechanism, allowing duty-free imports, for Ukraine on June 5, 2025.