EU Trade at Record High Since 2017 Association Agreement

In 2024, the value of two-way trade between Ukraine and European Union nations reached a record $17 billion in volumes, the Ukrainian National Scientific Center’s Institute of Agrarian Economics (IAE) reported.

This exceeded the 2022 $16.5 billion previous highest figure by 3% since the European Union - Ukraine Association Agreement came into effect in 2017, the press release wrote.

At that time, Ukraine and the EU’s 28 member states established a political and economic association between the parties - Ukraine had only applied for EU candidate status in 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.

Ukraine’s main 2024 agriculture trading partners were Spain, Poland, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Romania, France, and Belgium - which together accounted for 80% of its trade.

The EU primarily imports Ukrainian grain products, oil, and meat, the IAE reported, with

Ukraine recording a positive trade balance of approximately $9.0 billion.

Ukraine imports from the EU reached $4 billion, an increase of 9%, which primarily consisted of beverages, food products, tobacco, animal feed, chocolate, cocoa, cheese, and other dairy products.

In an Op-Ed for Interfax-Ukraine Kyiv’s minister of agriculture Vitaliy Koval wrote that EU’s share of total agriculture exports in 2024 comprised 52%, but relying on one major trade partners brought risks.

While this signaled more trade between Ukraine and the EU – an important outcome for Ukraine ahead of its ambition to accede to the union – it also creates a risk if anything negative happens to the EU economy or Ukraine-EU trade relations.

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“Having half of agricultural exports to one trade partner is risky, including the fact that several countries in the EU are hostile towards Ukraine’s agricultural exports,” Roman Neyter, research associate at Kyiv’s School of Economics (KSE), told Kyiv Post. “It needs to be diversified.”

Some EU countries fear that excessive imports of lower priced Ukrainian agricultural products could harm local farmers. In 2024, Polish farmers staged large-scale protests demanding that the EU completely ban agricultural imports from Ukraine.

Recently, the EU also decreased quotas on sugar imports from Ukraine, causing producers to refocus on Asian and Middle East markets, Kyiv Post previously reported.

Ukraine’s sugar exports to the EU decreased from 97% of output in 2023 to just 40% last year. Three Ukrainian sugar producers complained to Forbes Ukraine that the EU no longer wants their production.

Dmytro Panchuk, deputy general director of Khmelnitsky agricultural company Aspik Group, told Forbes: “We knew the EU would close its doors.”

Aspik Group increased sugar production by 25% in 2024, reaching 115,000 tons, of which 50,000 tons were exported to Libya, Turkey, Cameroon, and Georgia, Forbes said.

Ukraine’s 34th largest company Astarta and one of Ukraine’s largest sugar producers owned by Viktor Ivanchyk, exported sugar to the EU countries, the Middle East, and North Africa.

For Zhytomyr agricultural company Cygnet, the main markets in 2024 were Macedonia, Turkey, and the Balkan countries.