KYIV (Reuters) -Slovak truckers have begun to allow a limited number of lorries to cross into Slovakia from Ukraine, the Slovak hauliers’ association UNAS said on Thursday, easing their blockade which began on Monday.
Slovak hauliers are demanding the European Union reintroduce restrictions on access to the bloc for Ukrainian trucking firms that were removed after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year. Truckers on the Polish-Ukrainian border have the same demand, with both accusing Ukrainian firms of undercutting prices and offering services they are not allowed to.
Ukraine’s border service said on Facebook the “Slovak side partially resumed crossing operations to enter its territory” from Wednesday evening, adding 28 trucks were cleared to leave Ukraine at the Uzhhorod crossing on Thursday morning.
UNAS said truckers had decided to let two trucks per hour pass. “We are still at the border,” UNAS said on Facebook.
Since the beginning of the blockade, it said, it had declared that EU-registered trucks would not be blocked.
A spokesperson for the Slovak border police was not immediately available for comment.
Due to the almost month-long blockade of the Polish-Ukrainian border, a significant number of lorries have used Slovakian border crossings to cross into the EU.
Ukrainian infrastructure ministry data showed late on Tuesday that about 350 lorries had passed through a road crossing on Ukraine’s border with Poland since Polish truck drivers lifted their blockade on Monday.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv and Jan Lopatka in Prague; editing by Christina Fincher, Alexandra Hudson)
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