János Bóka, European affairs minister, said on Monday that admitting Ukraine to the European Union would pose a threat to Hungarian and European agriculture.
If it were admitted to the EU, Ukraine’s 41 million hectares of farmland would make it the largest beneficiary of EU agriculture subsidies, Minister Bóka said in a post on Facebook, noting that the EU’s farms cover 157 million hectares of land.
As an EU member, Ukraine would account for 15 percent of the bloc’s wheat production, 49 percent of its maize production and 20 percent of its grain production overall, Minister Bóka said. Ukraine already produces more sunflower seed than the whole of the EU, and whereas in 2021 it exported only one-third of its grain to the EU, by 2023 it exported more than half, he said. Also, Ukraine's sugar exports to the EU increased by 230 percent from 2022 to 2023, the minister added.
Minister Bóka said the problem was that even though Ukraine was not yet an EU member, more and more of its "inferior quality grain products" were already being "dumped" on the EU market. Further, he added, the country would retain its right to cultivate GMO seeds even if it joined the EU.