Lithuania will suffer as Polish farmers set to block border road – body

VILNIUS – As Polish farmers plan to block a road on the Lithuanian-Polish border from Friday, Zenonas Buivydas, secretary general of Linava, Lithuania's national road carriers' association, says this will cause significant damage to Lithuania. 

"Blocking the border is a huge loss for us as a transit country," Buivydas told BNS on Monday. "Now we have the European Union market, it's no longer a closed market. (...) We will suffer more than Poland."

Polish farmers could gather outside government institutions, not at the border, as it is the authorities that can make changes.

"It has to do not just with Lithuanian haulers here, we are a transit country, a Scandinavian, Baltic corridor. We are no longer in a vacuum. (...) I understand that they want to achieve something, but can they do it at the expense of others?" Buivydas wondered.

Polish farmers are gearing up for the blockade of the road at the former Kalvarija-Budzisko border checkpoint from Mach 1 for around one week.

Karol Pieczynski, the protest organizer, has told Lithuania's public radio LRT that Polish protesters will check what trucks will be transporting across the Lithuanian-Polish border.

Ausrys Macijauskas, chairman of the Lithuanian Association of Grain Growers, has told BNS that Polish farmers' suspicions that Ukrainian grain shipped from Poland to Lithuania is being returned or processed and exported as Lithuanian grain are justified. In his words, Lithuanian farmers are now recording Ukrainian grain but there are no official statistics on its entry into the country.