Maidan activist: Europeans are “making us look like suckers”
Forests massively cut down in the Carpathians are smuggled to Poland and returned to Ukraine at three times the price in the form of furniture assembled by Ukrainian guest workers.
Verkhovna Rada deputy, Maidan activist Dmitry Dobrodomov spoke about this on TV channel 112, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
According to him, the Europeans are now putting pressure on President Petro Poroshenko to lift the ban on the export of timber to the EU, imposed for several months by the Verkhovna Rada, and in exchange for new loans, begin official supplies of timber.
“There is a well-known bill on a moratorium on the export of round timber, I am its initiator and co-author. He had two goals. Finally stopping the insane smuggling of timber is a separate issue, because it continues in a different form, but this is a question for law enforcement officers.
[Second] is the creation of new jobs, we must process, do production, that is, create additional value - these are jobs, these are taxes, and this is what can lead us out of the crisis.
The only branch after the introduction of this law that showed a “plus” was furniture and woodworking. Plus 18 percent and plus 20 percent - this is an indicator of how you can achieve it.
And now the president is telling the European Union that he will cancel this moratorium because someone doesn’t like it, although I don’t know how, because this is the prerogative of the Verkhovna Rada,” Dobrodomov noted.
“We say: “Please, we don’t want to give you the round timber, take the processed wood, take the furniture from us!” And it turns out very interesting: unprocessed wood was smuggled to Poland, our migrant workers made furniture, this furniture ends up in our stores, so that we pay three times more for them. It’s absolutely unique what’s happening!” – the Maidan worker was indignant.
English version :: Read in English Maidan activist: Europeans are “making us look like suckers”