(1)

Following Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine since 24 February 2022, in order to support the Ukrainian economy, the European Union introduced by Regulation (EU) 2022/870 of the European Parliament and of the Council (3) trade-liberalisation measures supplementing trade concessions applicable to Ukrainian products under the Association Agreement between the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community and their Member States, of the one part, and Ukraine, of the other part (the ‘Association Agreement’ (4)). These trade-liberalisation measures have been renewed by Regulation (EU) 2023/1077 (5) and Regulation (EU) 2024/1392. In particular, Article 1 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1392 (‘the Regulation’) provides, inter alia, for the suspension of all the tariff-rate quotas established under Annex I-A to the Association Agreement. It also provides that the products covered by those quotas are to be admitted for importation into the Union from Ukraine without any customs duties.

(2)

The EU’s support to Ukraine has been confirmed with the prolongation of the trade liberalisation measures for yet another year. At the same time, there is a particularly precarious situation in the Union markets for poultry, eggs, sugar, oats, maize, groats and honey (‘the products’) that can harm Union agricultural producers if imports from Ukraine were to increase.

(3)

Accordingly, Article 4(7) of Regulation introduced an automatic safeguard concerning these products, which provides for the reintroduction of the tariff-rate quota suspended by Article 1(1), point (b), of the Regulation if certain import volumes are exceeded.

(4)

In order to monitor those import volumes, Article 4(7) of the Regulation empowered the Commission to adopt an implementing act laying down necessary the arrangements.

(5)

To allow for appropriate and timely, easily accessible and transparent monitoring of import volumes for economic operators, the Commission should make imports of these products subject to the customs formality set out in Article 49 of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 2015/2447 (6). In particular, the declaration of an order number would be mandatory.

(6)

For transparency purposes, the Annex to this implementing Regulation sets out the relevant arithmetic means of import volumes referred to in Article 4(7) of the Regulation.

(7)

This Implementing Regulation has been adopted in accordance with Article 5(4) of the Regulation,