No breakthrough as Rubio and Lavrov meet in Manila amid hardening Kremlin line
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Polish agri-food exports to Mercosur rose 28% year-on-year to €5.9mn in May, the first month of provisional application of the EU-Mercosur trade agreement, while imports fell 13.3% to about €141mn, preliminary Agriculture Ministry data showed on July 23.
Polish sales included bread, confectionery, malt and chocolate; imports were led by soymeal, coffee, tobacco, groundnuts and orange juice.
“This is the result of our actions and a diplomatic offensive aimed at opening further markets for Polish food,” Agriculture Minister Stefan Krajewski said, according to PAP, Poland’s state-owned news agency.
Poland exported €83.9mn of agri-food products to Mercosur in 2025, only 0.14% of total sectoral exports, and imported €1.713bn, more than 4.4% of its agri-food imports.
The EU and Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay signed partnership and interim trade agreements on January 17 after negotiations dating from 1999 and a political agreement reached in December 2024. EU governments approved the signature by qualified majority, with Poland, France, Ireland, Hungary and Austria opposed and Belgium abstaining.
The interim trade provisions have applied since May 1, while the full partnership requires national ratification.
Ponad has long opposed the deal and keeps doing so, Krajewski said.
“Poland opposed the agreement entering into force in its current form from the outset and, as the only member state, challenged the procedure used to advance it before the Court of Justice of the European Union,” Krajewski said.
Polish farm organisations staged nationwide protests and a Warsaw march before the signing, warning that lower-cost beef, poultry and sugar produced under different pesticide, environmental and animal-welfare rules could undercut domestic producers.
Supporters say tariff cuts can expand Polish sales of agricultural products abroad.
The EU capped preferential imports at 99,000 tonnes for beef, 180,000 tonnes for poultry and 25,000 tonnes for pork, while all imports must meet EU food-safety rules. Safeguards permit investigations when a 5% threshold is reached against a three-year average and emergency restrictions within 21 days.
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