BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union is ready to export almost all of Ukraine’s agriculture goods via “solidarity lanes”, the EU’s agriculture commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski said on Tuesday, after Russia pulled out of a U.N.-backed Black Sea grain deal this month.
Solidarity lanes are rail and road transport connections through EU member states that border Ukraine.
“It is not the first time Russia uses food as a weapon…the situation is similar to the beginning of the war,” Wojciechowski told reporters.
“We are ready to export almost everything. This is about four million tonnes per month of oilseeds and grains and we achieved this volume in November last year,” he added.
Wojciechowski said 60% of Ukraine’s exports were shipped via solidarity lanes and 40% went via the Black Sea while the U.N. backed grain deal was in operation.
The collapse of the deal is expected to take a particularly heavy toll on countries in Africa that depended on deliveries by sea.
The commissioner added that the EU was looking at several initiatives from member states to come up with a joint plan to cover the additional transport costs for the export of Ukraine’s agricultural goods.
Wojciechowski said there was no immediate estimate for the cost of funding the transport.
Expanding grain transit through the EU is sensitive for Poland and some other EU countries bordering Ukraine, where local farmers have come under pressure from increased Ukrainian imports.
(Reporting by Julia Payne and Geert De Clercq; Editing by Susan Fenton and Christina Fincher)
