In a letter to the European Union’s Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel sent on Monday (January 25), Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) President and CEO Marcos Jank has contested a request by European sugar producers and some EU Member States to increase sugar exports above the ceiling of 1.374 million tonnes, a commitment assumed before the World Trade Organization (WTO).

According to UNICA, current EU sugar surpluses are a result of stocks accumulated over the last campaigns, when world sugar prices were lower than the European price. UNICA sees current higher prices for sugar on the world market as an exceptional circumstance, that should not trigger a change in European sugar policy.

“The EU is trying to externalize its surplus problems on world markets, while this sugar surplus could well be used by downstream domestic users,” says Jank in the letter to Fischer Boel.

UNICA believes that the European Commission should undertake a proper consultation of the interests at stake and an assessment of potential implications, as a decision to increase exports would be an incentive for EU farmers to expand their sowing.

“In the short term, some user industries could be left without sugar they are counting on, as the export market becomes more profitable. In the mid to long term, when global prices for sugar drop below the European price, the EU will be left with cross-subsidized surpluses of sugar that will need to be exported, putting the EU in clear infringement of its international commitments,” concluded Jank.

To read the letter from UNICA to the Commissioner for Agriculture, click here.