High sugar prices are the result of over-regulation of the market by the European Union, politicians claim.

MP Jaroslaw Kalinowski (Polish Peasant’s Party) told Polish Radio this morning that cuts in sugar production ordered by the EU have resulted in soaring prices in the shops.

Kalinowski said that in 2006 the EU ordered cuts in production, intending to buy up the shortfall from developing countries. Consequently, Poland’s production of sugar  - one of the highest in the EU - does not cover domestic demand, leading to higher prices.

Last week it was reported in the German media that Poles were streaming across the western border into Germany to buy sugar half the price that it is at home.

The EU may allow further duty-free imports of sugar in the summer when stocks are usually low, the broker C. Czarnikow Sugar Futures Ltd. has said in its latest report.
 
Czarnikow said raw sugar climbed to a 30-year high in New York trading last month following poor harvests worldwide.

Food prices became a political issue last week in Poland when leader of the opposition Law and Justice party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, turned up at a local corner store in Warsaw and purchased a basket of groceries, which he claimed had increased two-fold in price from when he was prime minister in 2007.

Law and Justice have proposed that a one-off payment should be given to poorer families to help with the rising prices.

MP Jaroslaw Gowin from the governing centre-right Civic Platform rejected such a payment at a time when throughout Europe “the welfare state is bankrupt”, he told Polish Radio.

Pawel Poncyljusz from the Poland Comes First (PJN) party, which broke away from Law and Justice late last year, said the one-off payment was “a communist [type of] invention that would solve nothing” - though the government has only belatedly took rising food prices seriously, he said.

Jaroslaw Gowin also said Law and Justice‘s one-off payment was an idea that came "straight from the People's Republic", adding that the government does not aim to reduce income inequalities as such, but to raise incomes for all Poles. (pg)