We are not interested in making money for Yuri Kosyuk, who enriches himself at the expense of French farmers, said Emmanuel Macron
After being attacked by French President Emmanuel Macron, Ukraine’s largest poultry business is counter-attacking.
The MHP company has been in the crosshairs for weeks French farmers and politicians who accuse her of flooding the European market with cheap chicken meattaking advantage of the EU’s decision to open its borders to Ukrainian exports following Russia’s invasion two years ago.
“I was quite shocked at how MHP can be positioned as anti-farmer and anti-EU,” Australian MHP executive director John Rich told Politico on a recent visit to Paris.
“Sometimes the Ukrainian food sector is misrepresented as either the barbarian at the gate – or the fox in the henhouse.”
President Emmanuel Macron pointed the finger at MHP founder Yuriy Kosyuk, dubbed the “chicken king”, claiming the EU is enriching him at the expense of European farmers.
“We’re not interested in making money for this guy. That’s not the goal, that doesn’t help Ukraine,” Macron told a press conference after the EU summit in Brussels earlier this month.
Ask protesting French farmers why they’re angry, and they’re sure to cite imports from Ukraine high on their list of grievances.
But for the Ukrainian company, such claims amount to a disinformation campaign organized by its competitors and further disseminated by French and European politicians.
The European reaction against the Ukrainian company is not new. Even before the war, the MHP was black beast (“black beast” in translation) for EU farmers. They accused the company of using a loophole in the EU-Ukraine trade deal to significantly increase exports of chicken breasts.
“I was really hoping that with the war, this farmer turbulence was behind us, that there would be more solidarity,” said Rich, an Australian who is based in Cyprus, where MHP is registered.
According to Rich, Ukrainian exporters are not to blame for the woes of European farmers.
Blame game
EU imports of Ukrainian poultry increased by 47 percent between 2022 and 2023, according to EU data. Earlier this month, as the farm protests reached their peak, the European Commission proposed to limit imports of Ukrainian sugar, poultry and eggs to the levels of the past two years.
But, speaking privately, EU officials say that based on official numbers, poultry imports from Ukraine do not pose a threat to the European industry.
Rich said MHP accounts for less than 3 percent of France’s total poultry imports. For him, the EU’s restriction on imports from Ukraine is politically rather than economically motivated. He warned that restricting poultry imports would not help European farmers and could instead benefit other third countries such as Brazil, which is now the EU’s biggest poultry exporter ahead of Ukraine.
“The French farmer complains about Ukrainian imports, but in reality he is upset about everything with imports from all other countries. The South American Free Trade Agreement is the elephant in the room,” he said, trying to deflect backlash against Ukraine to South American exporters from the Mercosur bloc.
French public opinion and the government are the fiercest opponents of the EU-Mercosur trade deal, which has been two decades in the making but met with political resistance in the early stages.
Rich claimed MHP was Ukraine’s biggest taxpayer (roughly €150m last year) and said Macron’s claim that Ukrainian trade advantages mainly benefited Kosyuk was “not correct”.
“I have enormous respect for the French government and the French president,” he said. “I will always thank them and him personally for the tremendous support he has given to Ukraine, but somehow something got lost in translation.”
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