EU confirms end of trade preferences for Ukraine after June 5

The European Union has made a final decision not to extend trade preferences for Ukraine beyond June 5, 2025. This was confirmed by Polish Minister for European Union Affairs Adam Szłapka during the EU–Ukraine Business Forum in Brussels.

“The decision has already been taken. We are returning to the terms of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area with Ukraine,” Szłapka said at a press conference, which was broadcast by the EU’s audiovisual service, Caliber.Az reports via Russian media.

He clarified that while the European Commission's proposed changes to the trade regime will still be reviewed by the EU Council, the decision to end the autonomous trade measures — emergency preferences granted to Ukraine — has already been finalized.

“The changes proposed by the European Commission will be considered at the [EU] Council, but the decision on autonomous trade measures has already been taken,” he added.

Poland currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council, having taken over the role on January 1, 2025 for a six-month term.

Since 2016, Ukraine and the EU have operated under a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) agreement. However, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the EU introduced temporary measures — known as Autonomous Trade Measures (ATMs) — that suspended quotas and tariffs on Ukrainian exports. 

The decision to end the ATMs comes after more than a year of mounting pressure from EU member states — notably Poland, France, Hungary, and Slovakia — as well as from European farmers, who argued that the liberalized regime allowed cheaper Ukrainian agricultural products to flood their domestic markets. While some trade analysts point to more nuanced economic data, political pressure has dominated the debate.

In 2024, in response to this pressure, the European Commission imposed safeguard caps on politically sensitive Ukrainian agricultural products such as sugar and poultry, even while the broader ATM regime remained in place.

Most of these products — part of a group of approximately 30 agri-food items — are still subject to tariff rate quotas under the original 2014 EU–Ukraine free trade agreement. The Commission must now decide whether to maintain these caps or adjust them by either expanding liberalization or reintroducing new restrictions.

Ukrainian officials and farming groups have voiced serious concerns. They warn that the end of emergency trade preferences without an adequate replacement framework could result in an estimated €3.3 billion loss in export revenue and a 2.5 percent contraction in Ukraine’s GDP.

By Tamilla Hasanova