EU deal to clear grain glut unravels amid acrimony

BRUSSELS — A deal struck just a week ago between the EU executive and the bloc’s Eastern frontline states to clear a massive grain glut is already falling apart, and with it, the bloc’s unity in supporting Ukraine in the face of Russia’s war of aggression.

The April 28 deal essentially had two elements: The first was a temporary ban on imports of Ukrainian wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seed that would allow some respite for the group of five Eastern countries — Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania — to clear the backlog.

The second was to facilitate the transit of Ukrainian produce across the territory of the five countries, enabling shipments to continue to third countries — particularly those in the Global South that have faced disruptions to supplies, and rising hunger, as a result of Russia’s invasion last year and blockade of Ukraine’s main Black Sea export route.

Poland has led calls to distribute the surplus in the form of humanitarian aid: “Maybe we can also cooperate with U.N. agencies, maybe we can cooperate with the World Food Programme,” Warsaw’s ambassador to the EU, Andrzej Sadoś, told POLITICO.

There’s just one problem with that idea, EU officials shoot back: Millions of tons of grain piled up in the region’s warehouses are unfit for human consumption.

“Arguments that it would be needed for food aid should be taken with a very large grain of salt,” a Commission official told POLITICO. “You could even call it perfidious.”

An EU diplomat, granted anonymity to allow them to speak candidly, was equally scathing of the behavior of Poland’s right-wing government, which wants to shore up the farm vote ahead of a general election due this fall.

“Polish representatives use blackmailing tactics,” this diplomat said, referring to Warsaw’s move to block separate agreements to finalize a long-awaited cooperation deal with African nations and agree on a package of sanctions against Belarus, which has sided with Vladimir Putin’s Russia in the war.

“This episode has created a lot of bad blood and will have a psychological and political impact on the cohesion within the EU when it comes to supplying Ukraine.”

Not of interest

An internal analysis by the Commission found that the bulk of the stockpile was only suitable as animal feed — and not for distribution by the World Food Programme, which usually buys high-quality wheat for milling and delivers it as food aid in the form of flour.

“Most of the grains available for export in the 5 [Member States] are feed grains which are not of interest for WFP,” the document, seen by POLITICO, said. “Additionally, we have to be careful in our political narrative and actions, to avoid being accused of wanting to export feed-quality grains to the countries in need.”

A Polish spokesperson said some 2.5 million metric tons of the 4-million-ton surplus of grains and oilseeds were for feed. 

The WFP doesn’t typically buy maize, of which some 8.7 million tonnes are held in the the five Eastern EU countries, the analysis also found. Rapeseed and sunflower seeds were also not normally bought by the WFP, the document stated.

A WFP spokesperson declined to comment.

Moral hazard

The Commission official made it clear that commodity speculators who had sought to profit from the surge in food prices that followed Russia’s invasion in February 2024, only to be caught out, should not expect to be bailed out at the expense of European taxpayers.

“That’s the risk of the trade. And these are not practices for which European support should be given,” the official said. The Commission analysis estimates that the cost of purchase and shipment of some 3 million tonnes of wheat from EU countries would come to between €1.5 billion and €3 billion. 

A U.N. analysis last year supports that argument, suggesting that the Russian invasion led to “excessive speculation” on commodity markets, with traders betting disruptions to Black Sea supply routes would cause global grain prices to skyrocket.

Concerns also emerged Friday that the week-old deal to ban imports but allow transit across the Eastern EU states was not working as intended. A Ukrainian official and an EU diplomat told POLITICO that Romanian officials were stopping shipments of Ukrainian grain at the Black Sea port of Constanța, citing a new EU rule banning storage on its territory.

A Romanian source with knowledge of the matter denied, however, that transit shipments had been halted. “Transit is going okay. And it’s not a problem,” the source said in response to a POLITICO inquiry. 

Additional reporting by Bartosz Brzeziński, Sarah Anne Aarup and Susannah Savage.