The European Commission has tightened quality rules for storing intervention maize, despite strong criticisms from several landlocked countries that they will be excluded, Commission officials said on Wednesday.
Last week, the proposal for altering the intervention maize rules was suspended within the EU executive's internal procedure, with no date given for when it would be resumed.
"Finally it has been adopted, it's just gone through the Commission," one official told Reuters. The amended regulation will now be published in the EU's Official Journal in the next few days and the revised criteria will apply from November 1.
EU maize stocks have risen sharply in the past two years, particularly in landlocked Hungary, from where they are hard to export. Maize stocks now stand at about 5.1 million tonnes.
Hungary has called the new maize rules discriminatory and also threatened to go to the European Court of Justice, the EU's highest court based in Luxembourg, if they were adopted. Maize is also harder to store than other cereals and deteriorates more quickly.
"The maximum moisture content as well as the maximum percentage of broken grains and grains overheated during drying will be reduced and a specific maximum weight will be introduced," the Commission said in a statement.
The maximum moisture content for maize to be accepted into intervention storage will fall to 13.5 percent from 14.5 percent and a minimum specific weight of 71 kg/hectolitre will be introduced where no such threshold exists now.
The maximum allowed percentage of broken grains will be reduced from 10 to five percent and that for grains overheated during drying will fall to 0.5 percent from three percent now.
Last month, several countries led by Austria, Hungary and Slovakia - supported by France, Italy and Poland - said the implications for landlocked Central European producers were so dramatic that they should be addressed by EU farm ministers.
The latest changes effectively exclude them from offering and storing maize into EU intervention, they said. Under the intervention system, farmers can sell wheat, barley and maize into publicly funded stores for a guaranteed price of just above 100 euros a tonne, which the EU says aims to be a safety net for farmers. Market prices are much higher.