The European Union (EU) will import agricultural products from countries such as Argentina, Canada or the United States if the war in Ukraine continues to affect food supply, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said Friday when analyzing the debates at the European summit. from Versailles, France.
“The discussion addressed the insufficiency of raw materials, including the agri-food sector,” said Draghi, who added that “The answer is that if this gets worse it will be necessary to import from other countries, such as the United States, Canada or Argentina”.
The Italian prime minister warned that opening up to these imports “determines a need to reconsider the entire regulatory apparatus, and we find this issue in state aid and in the Stability Pact,” the ANSA news agency reported.
“There is the conviction that the Commission should temporarily review the rules that have accompanied us these years,” added Draghi, alluding to the tariffs, subsidies and quotas with which the EU limits imports from countries such as Argentina or Brazil.
“We must redirect our supply sources, which means building new trade relations,” said the Italian premier.
He also anticipated that if the EU economy were to weaken due to the crisis, “it will be necessary to take a budgetary political response, not at the level of national budgets, but rather it must be a European response.”
