| The end of the saga on the temporary liberalisation of Ukraine’s imports to the EU could mark a new start in relations between Brussels and Kyiv. Talks with Ukraine on permanent trade liberalisation will start soon, as requested by EU leaders in the conclusions of the summit of 21-22 March, mentioned to Euractiv by the Ukrainian Trade Minister Taras Kachka, and as per the clause included in the agreement reached on Monday evening between the Council and the European Parliament. As of June 2025, there will be no more temporary measures; Brussels and Kyiv will work on a new treaty, and the role of agriculture in it will be crucial and more constructive than it has been in the past months. The renewal of temporary trade benefits for Ukraine has been an open wound and one of the most blatant contradictions in the EU’s support for Kyiv. European farmers have shown that they want to defend what they consider sensitive sectors. At the same time, those in Ukraine who want to continue exporting their most valuable products are victims of Russian tactics to weaken the country’s most prosperous economic sector. In recent months, we have seen coalescing the interests of French and Polish cereal growers and their governments, whose most deeply rooted Eurosceptic opposition to the European elections is in the agriculture sector. Confirmation came from the torpedoing of the EU-Canada trade agreement in the French Senate, motivated by the fears of the agricultural sector, and the outcome of the last Polish regional elections, with 57% support for the conservative, nationalist PiS in rural areas. | 