The initiative, in which Poland, Luxembourg and France participate, will be launched on July 15 and is part of the measures to deal with the world food crisis
Spain will lead an initiative, in which they will participate Poland, Luxembourg and Franceto take until September almost 8,000 tons of grain from Ukraine through a rail corridor that will link the country with the Mediterranean ports of Tarragona, Barcelona or Cartagena. The public-private project will start on July 15 and has been presented by the Spanish president, Pedro Sanchezto the other European leaders in the framework of the European Council held in Brussels. “It is clear that we cannot stand by and wait to see what happens in the Black Sea,” he explained at a press conference at the end of the summit on the Spanish contribution to unlock part of the 20 million tons of cereal that are calculated are blocked in the port of Odessa (Ukraine).
“According to the United Nations, there are now hundreds of millions of people at risk of a food crisis, spreading to more than forty countries, and we believe that it is imperative to get Ukrainian cereal crops out and into international markets. estimated at more than 20 million tons and that cannot be exported from Ukrainian ports due to the Russian blockade”, explained Sánchez, whose initiative responds to the Brussels appeal to set up “solidarity corridors” to try to export as much grain as possible from Ukraine.
The idea is that the Ukrainian trains, which use a different gauge, arrive at the Polish border with the grain that would later be unloaded and transferred to other railways with standard gauge that, after crossing Poland, Germany, Luxembourg and France, will end in Spanish Mediterranean ports where the cereal would be stored in silos for later export to the countries of North Africa and the Maghreb.
600 tons in July
In the initiative, coordinated by the Ministry of Transport, several railway companies will participate, such as the French SNCF or RENFE, which will install railways, locomotives and containers that will take, according to the sources consulted, six days to cover the route from Ukraine to the Mediterranean. The objective is to take out 600 tons in the month of July although shipments are expected to increase from August to 8,000 tons during the first three months of operation of the initiative.
From here on, the idea is to continue exporting the grain depending on the needs and the decision of Ukraine. “It is an important contribution that Spain wants to make to a very complicated situation & rdquor ;, they have explained from the Spanish Executive about a very limited contribution taking into account the enormous amount of grain blocked in the country. So far the Ukrainian government has established two routes for exporting grain through Poland and Romania, which involves moving the grain from the train to the ship across the Danube River to later ship it at the port of Constanta, on the Black Sea. All this, however, is a complex and very expensive process.
“War crime”
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Just four days ago the head of European diplomacy, Joseph Borrell, accused Russia of committing a “war crime & rdquor; for blocking the export of millions of tons of grain from Ukraine. “When more than 20 million grains are blocked in silos in Ukraine and someone prevents that food from reaching consumers. This has a price. There are people who are going to be hungry. It is a deliberate act to use food, grain in this case, as a weapon of war. A deliberate act to create a famine in the world, to put pressure on the world level, on the EU and on Ukraine. It is what is happening & rdquor ;, she lamented.
Brussels has spent a week looking for alternatives to exporting grain by ship and thus avoiding, or at least limiting, the Kremlin’s veto that, according to European leaders, could cause a “famine” in Africa. “It is necessary to remove 20 million tons of grain from Ukraine in less than three months & rdquor ;, said in early May the transport commissioner, Adina Valean. According to figures from Brussels, under normal circumstances Ukraine exports 75% of its cereal production, which generates 20% of its annual export earnings. Before the war, Ukraine’s Black Sea ports were responsible for 90% of its grain and oilseed exports.