President Iohannis: The solidarity corridors for Ukraine do not affect agriculture in Romania

The solidarity corridors for Ukraine do not affect agriculture in Romania, and the market in our country is not influenced by the products that are only transiting, President Klaus Iohannis said on Thursday."Solidarity corridors do not affect agriculture in Romania and I want to highlight this very clearly. We have opened these corridors because we are aware that Ukraine needs this aid and Romania can provide this aid without being detrimental to Romanian farmers," the president said.He brought to mind that last autumn, on the margins of the UN General Assembly, there were negotiations on solutions for the corridors issue."The government implemented them in our country and no products going through Romania were traded. So the Romanian market was not affected by products passing through Romania. The Romanian market has not been affected by products that only transit Romania. These things are known and need to be made known once more. If there is a need, then, of course, the Government will set up tighter controls, to see that they are not traded, but only transited, but this is a problem that has already been solved," Iohannis added.He argued that Romanian farmers "have essentially the same problems as farmers in France, Germany, Belgium.""It's about how subsidies are allocated, how much of the arable land they can use and so on, in the context that these discussions were basically concluded in 2020, so there is nothing new. But you have to know that since this was decided, every year so far derogations have been given and now it would be the first year when no derogations are given and farmers feel these things," Iohannis detailed.He said that solutions can be found to farmers' requests. He also said that there will be discussions on the protests on the agenda of the European Council special meeting."We cannot meet in Brussels, which is almost blocked by protests, and not talk about these things. But here I have to tell you that since last night we have already found some issues that can be solved quite easily to support farmers. These issues were discussed purely informally last night and we will certainly get some information today in the Council meeting. I don't think we will actually be able to make a decision and I don't think we need a Council decision to facilitate some measures for European farmers," said Klaus Iohannis.