Western companies refuse orders in Ukraine, German entrepreneurs on the ground are afraid of their existence - not because of conflict, but because Poland blocks the border in the West. Why does the EU not interfere?
When nothing helped, Marcus Chuhokupe sent one of the staff of his office to the task. Chupec-founder and head of the supplier company: his company Time & Space, which works several hundred people, near Lviv in the west of Ukraine, produces cable harnesses for car manufacturers and manufacturers of household appliances.
However, since October last year, he has increasingly have problems with fulfillment of deliveries. Since then, the expectation of Ukrainian trucks at border crossings to Poland has increased from several hours to more than three weeks. The flow of goods between the EU and Ukraine has been massively disturbed for several months for several months.
Their motives are sometimes more, sometimes less clear. Polish farmers are currently blocking the border. They protest against imports from Ukraine, as well as against the environmental requirements of the New Green EU course. At the beginning of March, the situation was so dangerous that one of the clients of the company Chupek was on the verge of production stop because the components from Ukraine did not receive. Then the German businessman asked a Ukrainian employee to go to the customer in Poland on a personal car. She brought two boxes across the border with urgent components: just in time for the customer, without the necessary registration in the border authorities and customs clearance.
The head of the company helplessly shrugs. Maybe it would be better to risk a factory stop in the customer - and lose a vital order? "Our existence is now really put on the map," Chuhokupe summarizes.
