the Ukrainian grain crisis seen from Brussels and Warsaw

Since the beginning of the war, the European Union has lifted customs barriers on Ukrainian agricultural products to allow Ukraine to continue exporting its cereals. Normally they had to pass through the ports of the Union to be exported to the countries of the South, except that a large part of these products ended up on the internal market, in particular in frontline countries such as Poland, Hungary , Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia, where local markets have been destabilized. Prices have fallen and farmers have sometimes taken to the streets to protest.

In Poland, four million tonnes of maize, wheat, barley and rapeseed entered the country and only 700,000 tonnes left. In response, the five States concerned decided in April, unilaterally and in defiance of European rules, to temporarily ban the import of cereals from Ukraine.