00:04Hello and welcome to The Cube, Euronews fact-checking show.
00:07Did the EU-Mercosur agreement just mean that 63 kg of worm-infested raw green Brazilian coffee was brought into
00:15Europe?
00:15That's the claim being spread on social media by French politician Florian Philippot and Polish MEP Eva Zakajowska-Henrik.
00:23According to Philippot, the EU-Mercosur agreement is poisoning European plates.
00:27Meanwhile, Zakajowska-Henrik claimed the infested shipment is a direct consequence of the agreement between the EU and South American
00:35countries.
00:36But what actually happened?
00:38Poland's Agricultural and Food Quality Inspection Authority posted on Facebook that inspectors in the city of Poznan blocked two patches
00:46of raw green coffee imported from Brazil.
00:48They said that the shipment was stopped due to damaged beans and the presence of live pests, without mentioning Mercosur.
00:54But although politicians linked the coffee to the EU-Mercosur agreement, which came into effect recently, Brazil and Poland were
01:02already long-standing coffee trading partners.
01:05Public UN trade data shows Brazil exported more than 15 million kilograms of green coffee to Poland in 2024 alone,
01:12long before Mercosur provisional agreement began.
01:15And raw green coffee beans already entered the EU tariff free, more than a decade before the Mercosur provisional application
01:22began.
01:22Poland's Food Quality Inspection Authority confirmed to us that it blocked 95 shipments of imported food products in 2025 alone,
01:31meaning these kinds of interceptions are not unusual.
01:34Critics of the Mercosur agreement, which does increase agricultural imports between the EU and Mercosur countries, argue that it could
01:42put pressure on European farmers and inspection systems.
01:45But there is no evidence that this specific shipment of raw green coffee was a product of the deal.
