Impact of EU enlargement to Ukraine on the sugar sector

As part of the process of enlarging the European Union to include Ukraine, Farm Europe has analysed both the weight and comparative competitiveness of Ukraine’s main crop sectors compared to those of the European Union. 

The difference in competitiveness ranges from 19% to 39% depending on the sector, with structural factors accounting for most of the difference. To this must be added the ‘carbon’ competitiveness conferred by the natural richness of Ukraine’s soils.

At a time when the steps and conditions of accession are about to be drawn up and the pre-accession programmes defined and launched, we feel it is important that objective data can serve as a basis to define the European Union’s roadmap, without bias or avoidance.

Ukraine & European Union: key figures for the sunflower sector

The organisation and competitiveness of the Ukrainian sugar sector is very different from that in Europe: agro-holdings, huge vertically integrated farms, cultivate 93% of the sugar beet area. The average cultivated area is 23,700 ha, 1,763 times more than in the European Union.

Ukraine has much lower labour and investment costs. What’s more, the presence of fertile soils means that fewer inputs are used on crops: up to 1.5 times less fertiliser than in the European Union.

The opening up of the European market to Ukraine has resulted in an influx of sugar, which has led to an increase in European stocks. Exports of sugar from Ukraine to Europe have increased by 230% between 2022 and 2023, with a forecast export capacity to the EU of 800,000 tonnes to 1 MT. The introduction of safeguard measures now limits exports for the time they are in force.