Tight cereal supplies have been a gift for the European Commission this year - allowing it to sell most of its intervention stocks and put an end to the much maligned grain mountains of the past, analysts say.
But large reserves of German rye will remain, and the European Union may have little room to manoeuvre next season if last year's drought is repeated.
"They will manage to end the season with no stocks apart from rye. And now, without the Commission's support, the consumers will have to carry the burden of holding stocks themselves," said James Dunsterville, analyst at AgriNews.
Intervention stocks are expensive. The EU has to buy the grain at a fixed price of just above 100 euros a tonne and then pay around 13 euros a year to store it.
EU intervention stocks in 1999 were around 14 million tonnes, and have gradually subsided since as the intervention price as been reduced under Common Agricultural Policy reforms.
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