Grain debacle makes mockery of EU support for Ukraine

BRUSSELS — Nearly two weeks after its Eastern front-line member nations banned imports of Ukrainian grain, the European Union continues to be struggling to give you a plan to clear a large and disruptive provide glut, in a debacle that threatens to make a mockery of Europe’s declared solidarity with its war-torn neighbor.

Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Commission’s prime commerce official, has been holding video conferences all week with ministers from Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania on discovering methods to clear the excess and to compensate hard-pressed farmers — to this point to no avail. EU ambassadors will meet once more on Friday however, and not using a take care of the 5 Eastern European nations, such a step would make little sense.

At stake is a delayed decision on whether or not to increase the tariff-free standing for imports of Ukrainian produce, initially granted final June for 12 months in a gesture of solidarity following Russia’s full-scale invasion.

“It’s strange that so far we haven’t got a clear answer on what’s actually happening,” mentioned Andrei Sizov, managing director of SovEcon, an agricultural analysis agency centered on the Black Sea area. “We have had many statements, many of them contradicting.”

Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria restricted imports of Ukrainian merchandise earlier this month in response to a supply glut attributable to disruption to exports by way of the Black Sea. While Romania has not imposed its personal restrictions, it has joined the 4 nations in calling for restrictions on the EU degree.

Each day that passes brings the bloc nearer to the late summer season harvest season, during which tens of millions extra tons of grain might flood Eastern European markets. Poland, for instance, has an estimated surplus of 4 million metric tons of grain on its territory — greater than its ports can shift earlier than this yr’s harvest.

What single market?

On the face of it, the unilateral import bans would violate the foundations governing the EU’s single market. Other EU members have known as them “unacceptable“. “You can’t call for solidarity and take unilateral decisions at the same time,” French Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau mentioned at a testy ministerial assembly in Luxembourg on Tuesday.

But as an alternative of calling the the gang of 5 Eastern member states to order, the Commission has indulged them by proposing momentary “preventative measures” to make sure that Ukrainian maize, wheat, sunflower and rapeseed don’t get caught on their territories.

The Eastern nations have responded to the Commission’s outstretched hand by grabbing its total arm, calling for the listing of merchandise topic to restrictions to be expanded. Details are sketchy — and the talks secret — however the nations need the listing to incorporate different items like sunflower oil, milk and poultry meat, and the restrictions to stretch past the June 5 deadline proposed by the Commission, in accordance with a letter seen by POLITICO.

They additionally need stronger assurances that the Ukrainian merchandise crossing their borders would have exterior consumers ready for them, to allow them to be shipped instantly onwards to nations in North Africa and the Middle East, that are the normal consumers of Ukraine’s surplus manufacturing.

Help not wished

The 5 capitals have additionally proposed that Ukrainian grain be bought by the EU in cooperation with the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP), which is already distributing meals help as half of a U.N.-brokered association that enables protected passage for Ukrainian exports by way of Russia’s Black Sea blockade.

That concept has, nevertheless, been placed on ice for the time being, in accordance with EU officers.

For the WFP deal to undergo, somebody would want to foot the invoice to get the grain out — and neither the 5 capitals nor Brussels are eager to take action. Generally, the WFP solely organizes logistics, which donors are then nonetheless anticipated to pay for. With tens of millions of tons of maize and wheat caught in warehouses, the euros required to maneuver them are including up shortly.

“The agreement that is on the table is unexpectedly good for Poland, it is more than anyone could have imagined possible at all,” EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, himself a Pole, mentioned earlier this week. 

“I would very much like this agreement to be concluded, to maintain this positive climate around Poland as a leading country in helping Ukraine. We are close to a really big achievement and a solution at the European level to a very serious problem. It would be a shame to lose it.”