Their report states that former agriculture minister Henryk Kowalczyk was rightly dismissed over this issue. The whole matter is also seen as one of the major causes of the PiS ruling party's loss of votes.
When the European Union decided last year to lift import duties and quotas on most Ukrainian agricultural products, farmers in the five neighboring EU countries feared being pushed out of the market. To support the Ukrainians in their struggle against the Russian invasion, the country also received billions in aid from Brussels.
The then Polish agriculture minister Kowalczyk advised Polish farmers not to compete but to store their grain harvest instead of selling it at dumping prices. The report from the Polish Supreme Audit Office now states that this advice was not based on any market research and that no calculation was made of what the economic consequences could be.
The border blockades of Ukrainian freight transports initiated by Poland were adopted by several other neighboring countries (Hungary, Slovakia), but the European Union was unwilling to lift the exemption from import duties and quotas. Also, only a limited European crisis reserve was made available for the large unsold Polish grain stocks.
Moreover, the research from the Polish Supreme Audit Office now confirms that it was primarily Polish grain traders who “filled their pockets” by purchasing the “EU-subsidized” cheap Ukrainian grain.
Six companies bought more than a quarter of the imports of Ukrainian grain. This had already become clear earlier this year, but the PiS government in power at the time refused to provide transparency on the matter.