After a month, the truck blockades on the Polish-Ukrainian border continue unabated. As the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported on Tuesday, 5,000 vehicles are now stuck in traffic jams up to 30 kilometers long at the Polish-Ukrainian crossings. The conditions for the blocked Ukrainian drivers are tough: apart from a few mobile toilet blocks, the Polish authorities have done little to make the wait bearable. Buying food in the sparsely populated border region often involves hours of walking. At some point, the tanks from which the cabins can be heated are also empty. Two Ukrainian drivers have since died in the queues.

The protesting Polish truck drivers are calling on the EU to reintroduce the maximum limits for Ukrainian trucks in the Schengen area, which are valid until 2022. They were lifted after the start of the war as an act of solidarity with Kiev. Since then, firstly, the number of Ukrainian trucks entering the Schengen area has increased from 160,000 to 800,000 annually, and secondly, the share of Ukrainian freight forwarders in cross-border traffic has grown significantly. Polish haulage companies are complaining that their market share of transport journeys between the two countries has fallen from 35 to ten percent, and the situation is similar for Slovakian and Hungarian haulage companies.

Since the beginning of the war, Ukraine has significantly expanded its freight forwarding industry by exempting the import of vehicles from customs duties. This was in response to the blockade of the Black Sea ports, through which the majority of Ukraine's foreign trade was traditionally handled. Polish haulage companies are calculating how Ukrainian competitors are undercutting their prices due to lower fuel prices, taxes and wages. Moreover, contrary to the agreement with the EU, Ukrainian drivers are not only active in bilateral goods traffic, but also transport loads within the EU, for example between Poland and Germany. Although this contradicts the agreement, the Polish and German police have apparently given up on monitoring compliance. A Polish police spokesperson told the magazine Przegląd that fines imposed on Ukrainian drivers are not paid anyway and cannot be collected due to the lack of a mutual legal assistance agreement.

German businesses are now also complaining about the consequences of the blockades. Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland quoted a representative of the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations as saying that delivery times for goods from Ukraine have recently tripled and transportation costs have doubled or quadrupled. If no solution is found, German customers will have to look for other suppliers. The German automotive industry in particular is now having labor-intensive production work carried out in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian side now estimates the damage caused by the blockades at 400 million euros. Deputy Transport Minister Sergiy Derkach complained that the price of liquid gas at Ukrainian filling stations had now risen by 30 percent. He accused Polish haulage companies of at least accepting an energy crisis in Ukraine in the coming winter.

The truck blockades were also discussed in the EU Council of Transport Ministers on Monday. Here, the Polish demand for the reintroduction of the maximum limit was rejected by a majority. Poland was supported by Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria, as well as in part by the Czech Republic and Croatia. However, EU Transport Commissioner Adina Ioana Vălean accused Warsaw of a lack of political solidarity with Ukraine and recalled that Poland had been one of the biggest advocates of Ukraine's accession to the EU and the "solidarity corridors" in road transport at the beginning of the war. She was supported in this by representatives of the Baltic states, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands. Vălean at least agreed to discuss the issue with Ukraine at EU level - but only once the Poles had ended their blockades. It doesn't look like that will happen at the moment. The action is to continue until January 3 for the time being.