Ukraine’s Minister of Infrastructure Vladyslav Kryklyi and Poland’s Minister of Infrastructure Andrzej Adamczyk held a bilateral meeting on 13 October within the framework of Polish President Andrzej Duda’s official visit to Ukraine, the CFTS portal reports, citing information from the Ministry of Infrastructure. 

Kryklyi and Adamczyk discussed the prospects for development of transport links between the two countries, as well as realization of their transit potential.

According to the ministry, Kryklyi focused attention on the need to provide Ukrainian truckers with a sufficient number of Polish permits on the terms that were agreed at the time of signing the Ukraine-EU association agreement.

He stressed that Ukrainian carriers were expecting progress on this issue and that they were ready for bilateral permits to be issued on a parity basis. In addition, according to him, neither side should restrict transit traffic. The minister added that Poland’s restrictions on Ukrainian carriers in trucking permits had a negative impact on trade and urged Adamczyk not to allow automobile traffic to be stopped.

According to Kryklyi, the quota for Polish international trucking permits should not be less than 200,000. This is the minimum required for transport operations by Ukrainian carriers, he said. In addition, according to him, Ukraine is ready to introduce digital exchange of trucking permits.

The Ukrainian minister of infrastructure also spoke about the measures that have been adopted to establish control over the procedure for issuing permits and proposed development of a joint digital infrastructure and transition to electronic permits. According to him, Ukraine has fulfilled all the obligations it assumed during the previous meetings of the joint commissions on international road transport and he expects Poland to fulfill its obligations during the commission’s next meeting in early November 2020.

Adamczyk noted Ukraine’s progress in the area of road construction and stated the need to develop transport corridors, particularly the Go Highway transport corridor. According to him, the problem of shortage of permits should be resolved after acceleration of border traffic, as well as through optimization of the operations of border crossings and separation of passenger and freight traffic.

The ministers also discussed development of border infrastructure, implementation of joint railway infrastructure projects, increase of rail container traffic, and cooperation in the port and aviation industries.

According to Kryklyi, it is feasible to conduct an experiment involving creation of a common customs area to optimize border-crossing procedures for carriers. Several border crossings between Ukraine and Poland could be the first pilot projects of this experiment.

Board Chairman of the Ukrainian Railways joint-stock company (Ukrzaliznytsia) Volodymyr Zhmak, acting head of the Ukrainian Seaports Authority (USPA) Oleksandr Holodnytskyi, and representatives of the Ministry of Infrastructure, the Ministry of Energy, the State Road Agency (Ukravtodor), the USPA, and others participated in the talks.

According to Zhmak, other issues were also discussed with Polish representatives.

"Issues of future cooperation with Polish counterparts were discussed during a panel discussion at the Ukrainian-Polish Economic Forum, which was attended by President Volodymyr Zelenskyi and President Andrzej Duda. They include infrastructure development, increased routing of shipments and an active fleet of locomotives, concession of container terminals, tariffs, and restoration of passenger train traffic between Ukraine and Poland," Zhmak wrote in his Telegram channel.

As the CFTS portal reported earlier, the Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure announced in August this year that it had received 4,711 trucking permits from Poland and 4,600 transit permits from Slovenia and distributed them to Ukrainian carriers.