Germany, France oppose extending Ukraine grain curbs

BRUSSELS: EU heavyweights Germany and France on Tuesday opposed a push to extend restrictions on sales of Ukrainian grain exports in five eastern European countries that have enraged Kyiv.

The 27-nation bloc dropped duties on Ukrainian exports in the wake of Russia’s all-out invasion in a bid to help Kyiv earn vital revenues.

But EU countries along the border of the global agricultural powerhouse started barring imports after their farmers protested that a glut of Ukrainian grain was pushing down prices.

Brussels struck a compromise in April that allowed Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia to prohibit sales on their local markets while keeping transit routes open for Ukrainian grain to cross their territories.

The measures are currently set to run out in mid-September, but the five countries have called for them to be prolonged to the end of the year.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday branded any extension “absolutely unacceptable and frankly anti-European”.

His broadside came as focus has settled on securing routes for Ukraine to export grain to global markets after Russia withdrew from a deal to send it via the Black Sea.

Kyiv’s opposition was echoed by EU countries including Germany and France at a meeting of the bloc’s agricultural ministers in Brussels on Tuesday.

German agriculture minister Cem Ozdemir said the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, needed to make clear any extension was “not possible”.

He insisted that Poland’s internal political disputes ahead of elections later this year should not be played out “on Ukraine’s back”.

France’s minister, Marc Fesneau, said “there can be no unilateral measures, no individual adventures, only a collective response to the challenge of destabilising the markets”.

A spokeswoman for the commission said Brussels was working “very intensively” with the five EU member states and Ukraine to try to find a solution.

“These measures are targeted and temporary. They were put in place for a very specific situation of logistical bottlenecks and facilitation of trade that was happening in these bordering countries,” spokeswoman Miriam Garcia Ferrer said.