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Hungary, the rogue child of the European Union, is ready to break more of the bloc’s rules. The Minister of Agriculture, István Nagy, has vowed to fight against the import of cheap Ukrainian grain to his country, even if this risks another infringement procedure with the EU.

In a radio interview, he claimed that if the EU does not extend the ban on grain imports from its war-ravaged eastern neighbour, Hungary will continue this prohibition unilaterally on four of the 24 listed goods. Nagy admitted this would “obviously” lead to a fight with Brussels. In that case, Budapest would not relent, but would go further, and introduce the ban on all products concerned.

Threats from the Hungarian government often sound empty, but it may be different this time. Budapest has already started negotiating with Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania on the issue of cheap Ukrainian imports, which is making central Europe a force to be reckoned with.

Romania has come to Ukraine’s aid after Russia broke a wartime shipping agreement that allowed the safe passage of grain via the Black Sea. 60 percent of Ukraine’s grain exports will now access the world markets through Romania.

In August, Kyiv and Bucharest reached an agreement to increase the war-torn country’s grain exports and improve river, rail, road and maritime transit infrastructure, including border crossings.

At the same time, Ukraine’s neighbour is acting as a transit country, because it has been protecting Romanian markets from Ukrainian grain imports, along with Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Poland. Last year before this ban, Romania bought 13 percent of Ukraine’s grain exports, worth $1.2 billion.

In France, a Sunday lunch of a roast chicken is a time-honoured tradition. The dish, the French people’s favourite, is available to just about everyone. You can find organic free-range chickens for 20 euros, as well as poultry for less than ten euros, often sold in halal butchers’ shops, where broke students can only afford a bag of potatoes. It is also a symbol of French agriculture, which continues to raise alongside battery chickens.

But since 2022, the French chicken market has been in crisis. The lifting of restrictions on the entry of Ukrainian poultry into the European Union’s market has left the industry facing unexpected competition. In the first half of 2022, Ukrainian chicken imports into France rose sharply by 120 percent, and have since grown at a more moderate rate. With the Russian blockade of the Black Sea, Ukraine can “no longer export to the Middle East [by ship], which was one of its main customers,” explains Yann Nédélec, director of the poultry producers’ association.“It has switched to Europe, via lorry.” 

French poultry farmers see the massive arrival of chickens up to four times cheaper than their own as unfair competition. 

Ukraine does not have to comply with the same quality standards as countries of the European Union, and has huge farms with over a million head of poultry, whereas the largest French farms number only a few tens of thousands. In addition, massive exports to the EU mainly benefit one man, the oligarch Yuriy Kosiuk, who controls 80 percent of the Ukrainian poultry market via his company MHP. This mega-business is based in Cyprus and listed on the London Stock Exchange. 

In June, the industry asked the Minister for Agriculture to “activate the European safeguard clause to halt the asphyxiation of the sector” and suspend imports.

Unexpectedly, this request met with little response from the political class, even on the far right.

“We will not allow Ukrainian grain into Poland after 15 September even if the EU is against this. The interests of the Polish farmer are of the highest importance to us,” stated Robert Telus, the Polish Minister of Agriculture.

The EU ban on imports of Polish grain will expire in mid-September and the Polish government should lift all barriers from this moment. But the ruling Law and Justice (PiS)-led government is not planning to do so.

One reason for this refusal is that the Polish market was flooded with Ukrainian grain last May. Polish farmers could not sell their homegrown grain, which lay unwanted in warehouses.

At that time, Ukrainian grain was only supposed to transit Poland, but most likely some Polish companies decided to bring it to the local market. Inspections showed the grain was low quality, and the Polish prosecutor’s office is now investigating what happened.

But the whole case has a strong political background due to the upcoming parliamentary election in October. The issue of grain imports has caused discontent among farmers, without whose support the ruling Law and Justice party will not win the crucial vote.

PiS also has to compete with the far-right Confederation party, which is in third place in the polls, and adopts an anti-Ukrainian stance. This is why the Law and Justice politicians are determined to block the import of Ukrainian grain.

The government is willing to maintain this ban, even if it turns out to be in contravention of EU law. It is likely that the European Commission will then impose financial penalties on Poland. The cost of this challenge will likely be borne by the citizens.

After all, for reasons of political wrangling with Brussels, Poland has still not received funds from the Recovery Fund.

When I was a child, I remember my father jokingly asking me: “Can you list the Twelve Gothic Kings of Spain?” Of course, I couldn’t, as I’d never had to learn them in school. However, he could still recall their names.

This list of Gothic Kings has come to encapsulate how Spaniards view their education system. Many believe that the traditional methods of education, based around the teacher and focusing on memory and content, is better than the modern system, centred on students and creativity, with an emphasis on processes rather than results.

Of course, our idiosyncrasies and our history don’t help. We look at the Spanish PISA results, and at those of Nordic countries and think, ‘Why can’t we be like them?’ But we have a different education system in every region, as well as different regional languages, and regulatory changes occur almost as often as changes of government.

But while I may have been educated in a system that no longer prioritises memory as much as my father’s, we tend to ignore the broader picture. The past is no better, and we have made a huge leap forward: before, education was mandatory only until the age of 14, and only 6% reached university level. Now, it is compulsory to stay in school until the age of 16 and the number of university students continues to grow.

In fact, the two models shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, as each has its benefits. Contrary to the narrative that the younger generations are reading less, data show that the reading rate among Spaniards has increased by 5.7 points in the last ten years, with a particular increase among adolescents.

Despite the narrative that teachers are now too lenient with students, allowing them to pass courses with ease, Spain’s dropout and grade repetition rates are still among the highest in Europe. This is the biggest problem the country has to solve in education.

Another issue is that more teenagers want to go to university and study in their home country, but then leave to work abroad. Maybe the education system is functioning well, but there are few opportunities afterwards.

“You say things have become so bad in schools. But nothing has collapsed!”

– Minister for Education and Science Przemyslaw Czarnek at a press conference ahead of the new school year.

If you ask the Polish minister for education, there is no such thing as a shortage of teachers.

Headteachers tell a different story: they cannot find maths, physics, chemistry, English, Polish or preschool teachers. In order for lessons to start, they have been pleading with retired teachers to stay at least for a semester, and offered overtime to others.

But Polish teachers are already overloaded. They are in charge of too many classes, often with 30 pupils, so it is difficult for them even to remember students’ names.

Parents and pupils react by running away. A recent survey, “Barometer of Non-Public Education”, shows that waiting lists for private schools are getting longer. This year, an average of more than four candidates for just one place applied for private schools in the largest Polish cities.

As a result, the privatisation of education in Poland is progressing. That would mean a growing inequality in access to education: those who can afford it, win from the start.

Anna Novosad used to be Ukraine’s minister of education. Now she runs the NGO SavED, which brings schooling back to war-torn communities in Ukraine.

Last September, Ukrainians didn’t know how to teach children during a full-scale war. Now we have educated ourselves. What are the challenges that Ukrainian teachers and school children are facing?

First of all, it’s access to education. In many regions close to the frontline, kids will start learning online, because it is still too dangerous to gather together. Secondly, the Russian occupiers often fire at schools. About 1,500 school buildings have already been destroyed ― and the number is growing.

For example, we work in many settlements in the Mykolayiv region, where 80% of schools were destroyed. But people are returning, and kids are back ― without places to learn. So we set up temporary schools in culture centres, medical units, basements or shelters.

There used to be a lot of hope for online learning tools. Are they ineffective?

Education isn’t just about knowledge ― it’s also about socialising. You can’t teach interaction, teamwork and empathy via Zoom. Especially with young children. And often what they want most is to get offline, not to receive a new laptop or tablet.

It’s also clear now that online learning doesn’t provide the same quality of knowledge. PISA test results are not in yet, but from what I know so far, they are disastrous.

You probably have some kind of medium-term action plan. How do you see the situation in a year or two?

This depends very much on the region, but temporary schools seem to be a widespread solution. Rebuilding school buildings that have been destroyed will take many years.

Recently, we’ve turned a village cultural centre into a school near Kyiv. It feels like this will be the only proper educational facility there for at least five years. The school building will be rebuilt with the help of the European Investment Bank, and, as I am told, the bureaucracy process there is painfully slow.

That’s how many times Macedonian schools were evacuated during the last year. Why? The police had to intervene following almost a thousand fake bomb threats.

The frightening phenomenon began last autumn, when the country, like several others in the Balkans, started receiving dozens of bomb threats daily.

This mostly affected countries who are helping Ukraine’s defence against Russia. Experts have pointed the finger at a possible Russian hybrid attack designed to stretch security resources and cause disturbance for a country of only two million people.

As the children go back to school, the fear returns that the threats may resume.

“In the last week of every month, my family makes a survival plan. If I manage to sell a few pictures, I am out of trouble. If not, I can go grape-picking,” says László, a teacher and part-time cartoonist from the Hungarian town of Dabas.

With only three-and-a-half years until retirement, he expects a monthly pension of 160,000 forints (416 euros). “My colleagues and I are worth more than what this government is offering,” he adds.

Éva, a special needs teacher from Budapest, tells a similar story. “I ran out of energy. At a certain point, I couldn’t keep it together and I started crying in front of the whole staff.”

László and Éva are no longer teachers. They are two among hundreds who have quit their jobs in recent months, due to persistently low salaries and the introduction of the so-called ‘status law’, which restricts the rights of teachers.

Without doubt, Hungarian teachers are off to a grim start this school year. Despite almost a year of protests and strikes, and countless promises from the government, their situation has not changed. Some have been sacked for their actions, and salaries remain among the lowest in the European Union. Meanwhile the government is blaming the EU for freezing the funds needed for a pay rise.

Moreover, the new status law limits their right to protest, raises their maximum number of daily working hours from eight to 12, and obliges them to be transferred to schools with a shortage of teachers.

This may happen soon, as schools are listing vacancies for teachers specialised in “maths and everything else”. According to the Ministry of the Interior, which is responsible for education, the country only has a shortage of 460 teachers, but this figure will rise as many have pledged to resign soon.

Lviv in the summer of 2023 has the vibe of a holiday resort. Here, air-raid alarms are rare, and I have this feeling of stability and safety that most Ukrainians have forgotten. This is the place where I sleep well.

When I was there two weeks ago, I was struck by the bustling restaurants, bright souvenir shops, street performers and market stalls. This was in stark contrast to Kyiv, Dnipro, Odesa, not to mention Kharkiv, which is shelled almost daily by the Russians.

In wartime, west Ukraine has become a safe haven for many from regions closer to Russian troops or falling rockets. People go there to recover, and to get some rest from stress and threats. Some establishments near the precious mineral water springs are booked out well into October. This has never happened before. And that is a blessing.

Not only do civilians recover in Lviv, but also military personnel. Several clinics in the region have been converted into rehabilitation centres, and the biggest prosthetics facility called Unbroken is also here. The land forces academy and army units are located in the city, and the military often observe the jubilant civilian life without fascination.

“Here are so many wounded people and soldiers, who are spending a free day before they are sent to the frontline. If a soldier visits a bar, he sees many tourists, men of his age, resting, having fun, and drinking alcohol. They won’t risk their lives tomorrow, but he will,” my former colleague who was mobilised and had training in Lviv, desperately said.

But many comrades at the frontline see this situation as natural and even positive. As MP-turned-soldier Yehor Firsov said: “When I see a full restaurant, it feels so good. We maintain the front so that they can continue to live a life.”