At the bandwidth limit – a protest by truck drivers

In traffic at the border you gotta stand all day // source: Pixabay.com, author_James Qube

The strike of Polish truckers is getting stronger. Physically demonstrated deficiency of consent to the current policy of the European Union towards Ukrainian carriers has been more than 3 weeks. The first border crossing was blocked on 6 November and so far lies in the law of full lethargy.

There are 8 border crossings at the Galician end of our country. Currently, for the sake of round-the-straight perturbations, no of them work with appropriate bandwidth erstwhile it comes to dense goods vehicles.

Medyka joined the list of practically impenetrable customs control posts of Przemyśl land on 27 November. The truck drivers there joined forces with farmers who vented their outrage on the long-established issue of grain from the east.

On the Ukrainian side, about 500 of our countrymen and their vehicles are waiting for the crossing. As established by the diary of Legal Newspaper, any cars have been outside Poland for over 20 days, which gives grounds for imposing financial penalties.

Everything has its price

According to data from our neighbours, up to 50,000 semi-trailered tractor units (tires) a period were to pass the mentioned border before the flow of transport was contained!

– Protest on the Polish-Ukrainian border reduced its capacity 3 times – writes Robert Przybylski in “Rzeczpospolita”.

The Ukrainian authorities estimation that each day of the protest of Polish carriers costs an average 1 million hryvnia, i.e. in terms of gold – 111,000.

Let us turn to the curious parties

– Ukrainian services treat us like ATMs, and in Poland we lose the market. We fear competition from Ukraine. ZUS alone costs PLN 600 per period and even 5 times more in our country," said 1 of the protesters, in a conversation with “Rzeczpospolita”

– I would like to end this protest as shortly as possible, due to the fact that it is just as burdensome for us as it is for everyone around us," commented Tomasz Borkowski, president of the Committee for the Protection of Transport Carriers and Employers, quoted by Reuters. However, he besides said that "We are not going to quit and stand until we have our conditions!"

By the terms and conditions

Polish drivers request that the EU authorities regulate trade relations with our neighbours differently. Among their main postulates are:

– Restoring the request for Ukrainian competitors to get permits from the sector to import goods into the Schengen area

– excluding empty trucks from the electronic rail strategy on the Ukrainian side (the creation of the alleged green corridor)

– introducing measures to prevent Belarusian and Russian carriers from starting businesses in Poland

This issue is alternatively questionable in a pan-European perspective. Despite the increasing voices of opposition to maintaining support for Ukraine at the level as advanced as ever, most decision-makers inactive feel morally obliged, to this kind of gesture.

Rafał Weber recalls in an interview with “Rzeczpospolita” that during the work on the extension of the EU-Ukraine agreement there were ideas of extending its duration until the end of 2025, and even proposed that it should be in force without delay, until the end of the war.

Currently, there is no script for reaching an agreement rapidly on the horizon, but no 1 knows what time will bring.

Mr Mateusz Wasielewski