| Ukraine’s grain The tension between the Commission, EU frontline countries and Ukraine reached boiling point this week in the lead-up to a crucial Commission decision over whether or not to extend a temporary import ban. The deadline to renew is today (15 September) at 11:59 and is likely to come in classic Commission fashion – aka, as late as possible on a Friday afternoon in hopes of burying the news over the weekend. In one corner, we have EU frontline countries – Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia – bordering Ukraine blackmailing the Commission into submission, threatening drastic measures in the event the ban is not extended, including “indefinite” strikes and port blockades as well as unilateral trade action (which, FYI, is completely illegal given that trade is an exclusive competence of the EU). Meanwhile, Romanian Social Democratic MEP Victor Negrescu has proposed setting up an EU transit mechanism for Ukrainian grain imports, while Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu has asked his agriculture minister, Florin Barbu, to prepare for the European Commission’s forthcoming decision on grain from Ukraine. A notable exception is Bulgaria, which calls for an end to the ban in solidarity with Ukraine. On the other, we have Ukraine, which maintains that the ban undermines the Ukraine-EU association agreement to the detriment of the war-torn country’s farming sector. Sources say that Ukraine’s Zelenskyy is holding Commission President von der Leyen to her word after she reportedly promised an end to the ban on 15 September. State of the Union European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen gave no reassurances on finalising the missing pieces of the EU’s flagship sustainable food policy in her annual State of the Union address on Wednesday (13 September), instead proposing a change of course in the current agri-food debate. After last year’s uproar in the farming sector that they were overlooked in the annual speech, von der Leyen explicitly thanked the EU’s farmers in her address, expressing her appreciation for “providing us with food day after day”. While the move was welcomed by the likes of EU farmers’ associations and her own political party, the centre-right EPP, who have waged a war against the EU’s Green Deal in the name of food security in a bid to court the EU’s rural vote ahead of the European elections in 2024. But others decried the fact that key sustainable food policies – such as the Sustainable Food Systems law and the revision of the animal welfare legislation – were conspicuously absent. Animal welfare is a huge topic for stakeholders and citizens – one of the most successful European citizen’s initiatives was focused on the issue – so much so that one MEP this week even suggested that the EU needs its own Commissioner for animal welfare. Big week ahead Next week will kick off with a double whammy of a meeting of the European Parliament’s agriculture committee as well as a meeting of EU agriculture ministers. The ministers’ menu includes a discussion on the Commission’s soil health directive proposal and the (eternal) discussion on trade-related issues. Meanwhile, Greece and Slovenia will raise a point about the need for more instruments for use in a crisis. Meanwhile, MEPs will have an exchange of views with Spanish agriculture minister (and current chair of the AGRIFISH Council) Luis Planas on the agricultural priorities of the Spanish Presidency, as well as an exchange of views with the Commission on the manufacturing process of biodiesel and rules applying to its import. There will also be a hearing on the role of data and indicators in agricultural sustainability. At the same time, there will be a protest public protest in Brussels about pesticides organised by campaign groups, including PAN Europe, Friends of the Earth and EFFAT (European Federation of Food, Agriculture, and Tourism Trade Unions), with speakers including toxicology experts as well as Green MEP Jutta Paulus and socialist MEP Christophe Clergeau. Glyphosate next steps Since the publication of the EU Food Safety Authority EFSA’s assessment on glyphosate earlier this summer, all eyes are on another institution with a fun acronym: SCOPAFF, the EU’s Standing on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed, is now set to take its decision on whether to re-approve the contentious, but widely used herbicide beyond the end of the year. But even though the clock is ticking until the current approval runs out in December, the decision, originally planned for next week, was pushed back, while the agenda for next Friday’s session (22 September) only features an exchange of views on the topic. The topic is also not on Monday’s agriculture ministers’ meeting agenda. Meanwhile, two months after it first announced its verdict on glyphosate, EFSA published the remaining batch of background documents on the assessment on Wednesday. Invasive species The consumption of blue crabs recommended by Italy’s government members to halt the invasive species’ spread in the Mediterranean complies with the EU food rules, the European Commission confirmed to EURACTIV this week – but warns the feast may not last for long. The Mediterranean Sea has seen the dramatic spread of a new aggressive species, the blue crab (Callinectes sapidus), whose greed for bivalved molluscs such as clams, mussels, and oysters is beating down on the viability of Italy’s shellfish farming. Meanwhile, Scientists are urging national and EU authorities to take swift action against the rapid spread of the fire ant, a highly invasive species with the potential to cause major health and environmental damage, which has been found for the first time in Europe. “The fire ant is considered one of the worst invasive exotic species and the fifth most costly in the world, affecting ecosystems, agriculture and human health,” explains the journal Current Biology in an article published this week. Ants build mounds of earth in fields, damaging crops and infiltrating electrical installations. In the US alone, the annual cost of damage caused by fire ants is estimated at a whopping $7 billion. | 