Subscribe here: [ Ссылка ] Dispute over food offers a taste of battles to come as Ukraine seeks to join the European Union. When Ukraine’s trade representative, Taras Kachka, revealed to POLITICO that Kyiv was going to sue EU governments in a dispute over grain, it proved too much for one of the bloc’s diplomats to take.

“Was that man drunk?” the exasperated envoy demanded, all thoughts of diplomacy vaporizing in the heat of his frustration.

Ukraine made good on Kachka’s promise on Monday, formally filing lawsuits against Poland, Hungary and Slovakia at the World Trade Organization after the trio decided to defy Brussels and ban Ukrainian grain imports.

The dispute has fractured European unity, leaving other EU diplomats privately furious with Poland, especially, for going rogue. And the clash is sorely testing relations between Kyiv and Brussels at a sensitive moment in Ukraine’s 18 month-old war against Russia’s invaders.

The worst bit? It’s all just a taste of the fights to come.

For his part, Kachka barely flinched at the “drunk” jibe. EU diplomats, he told POLITICO, were apparently “not ready for this kind of clear language” from Kyiv.

The tensions erupted on Friday night, after the European Commission decided to allow Ukrainian grain sales across the EU. That ended restrictions on grain imports which five eastern EU member countries had originally sought, and won, in the spring, to protect their own domestic farmers from competition.

Within hours, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia announced their own unilateral bans on Ukrainian grain — spurning the European Commission, violating the rules of the EU single market, and enraging fellow EU governments.

Part-time allies
The three countries were guilty of “part-time solidarity” with Ukraine, complained German Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir. “When it suits you, you are in solidarity and when it doesn’t suit you, you are not,” Özdemir said Monday as he arrived for a meeting of EU farm ministers.

One EU diplomat said the unilateral move proves that winning votes counts for more than economic concerns in Poland, which is in the middle of a high-stakes campaign ahead of next month’s election. “It’s not about economic concerns anymore, but about national political goals,” the diplomat said. “We already knew that, but now it’s out in the open and clear to everyone.”

The dispute lays bare one of the conflicts at the heart of the Western alliance supporting Ukraine. How much longer can the EU (and Ukraine’s other allies) keep up their support for Kyiv, in the face of political pressure to boost their domestic economies and — like in Poland — win votes?

The question will only become sharper as Ukraine, an agricultural powerhouse, seeks to become a fully fledged member of the EU. On Tuesday, European affairs ministers from the bloc’s 27 capitals will over lunch discuss the potential future enlargement of the bloc to admit Ukraine and nations in the Western Balkans.

EU leaders have been vocal about the need to open the EU’s door to Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion began.

But, increasingly, the bloc is starting to realize that accommodating a war-devastated country of more than 40 million people means the EU itself will have to change.

Admitting the one-time breadbasket of the Soviet Union to the EU’s single market would make Ukraine the biggest beneficiary of the EU’s agricultural subsidies, forcing an overhaul of the Common Agricultural Policy. Then there are bigger questions including over the costs of reconstruction, regional aid and the need to reform the EU’s internal processes.

In all of these debates, the EU's existing member states stand to lose power and money to Ukraine.

“Grain is our first test,” said one EU official, who like the diplomats quoted in this article, was granted anonymity in order to speak candidly about sensitive matters.

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