On 6 June 2017, the ambassadors of the European Union reached an agreement on the Council’s position on temporary autonomous trade measures in favour of Ukraine, to support Ukraine’s efforts to complete the transition into a functioning market economy by mean of, inter alia, the progressive approximation of its legislation to that of the Union.

The European Union is Ukraine’s largest trading partner, whereas Ukraine accounts for 0.8% of the EU’s total trade. Ukrainian exports to the EU amounted to 12.7 billion euro in 2015, while EU exports to Ukraine amounted to 13.9 billion euro in the same year.

The proposed measures fall within the scope of the actions taken by the European Union in support of Ukraine, in the light of the conflict in eastern Ukraine and its difficult economic situation, and are additional to the trade provisions introduced under an EU-Ukraine association agreement signed in 2014, which included a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA), provisionally applied since 1 January 2016.

The trade concessions consist of additional import quotas at zero tariff for some agricultural products and the partial or full removal of import duties on several industrial products, to be applied for a period of three years.

Davide Scavuzzo