At the two-day G20 summit in Bali, on Tuesday 15 November, the EU signalled its determination to continue its support for developing countries particularly affected by the impact of the war in Ukraine - an impact for which EU leaders believe Russia is solely responsible.
“Russia’s war impacts us all no matter where we live, from Europe to Africa or the Middle East. And the best way to end the acute food and energy crisis is for Russia to end this senseless war and respect the UN Charter”, said European Council President Charles Michel in a speech ahead of the summit. According to him, “the Kremlin has decided to weaponise food”.
Mr Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU has invested €8 billion in strengthening food systems in 70 countries, “especially in developing countries”, and has moved 15 million tonnes of agri-food products through EU solidarity lanes. They stressed the importance of continuing, beyond Saturday 19 November, the Black Sea initiative agreed in July in Istanbul under UN auspices to get grain out of Ukrainian ports.
The EU has been able to clarify that the sanctions it has imposed on Russia do not prevent Russian grain and fertiliser exports, a senior European official confirmed on Tuesday.
The day before, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, and the British Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, had issued a joint statement to send this message to all countries and economic operators.
“We have always been clear that the target of our sanctions is Russia’s war machine and not the food or fertiliser sectors. To that end, we have provided clarity to industry and partners. This includes the UK’s publication of a General Licence, the US General Licence 6B; as well as updated and detailed EU guidance. These provisions make clear that banks, insurers, shippers, and other actors can continue to bring Russian food and fertiliser to the world”, they said jointly.
They called on their “global partners, and on the actors, industries and services involved in agricultural trade, to take note of these provisions” and “to bring Ukrainian and Russian food and fertiliser to meet acute demand; and to continue to advance the accessibility of food to all”.
Fertiliser for Africa. On the sidelines of the summit, the leaders of the EU, Germany, France, Rwanda, Senegal - in its capacity as the current presidency of the African Union -, the World Bank and the IMF, meeting in a round table on food security, worked on measures to facilitate African countries’ access to fertilisers, in particular through local production, “as we have done for vaccines”, said Charles Michel before the summit.
In particular, they discussed the establishment of a corridor by the World Food Programme to bring fertiliser from Russia to the African continent. A first shipment of 20,000 tonnes of fertiliser has already left the Netherlands and will arrive in Malawi in the coming days, according to a diplomatic source.
Additional emergency measures were also discussed, including funding to support the supply of the most vulnerable, should fertiliser prices rise. In the longer term, a Euro-African fertiliser partnership is envisaged, along the lines of the plant protein partnership agreed at the sixth EU/Africa summit last February. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)