Widely-shared social media posts have falsely linked a rejected shipment of Brazilian coffee in Poland to the EU-Mercosur agreement, claiming that the deal has allowed contaminated products to enter Europe.
The claims emerged after Poland’s Agricultural and Food Quality Inspection Agency (IJHARS) announced on Facebook that it had blocked 63,000 kilograms of raw green coffee from entering Poland.
The shipment, which inspectors said was halted in Poznań, contained “damaged beans” and “live pests”.
Polish far-right MEP Ewa Zajączkowska-Hernik and former French MEP and founder of the Eurosceptic Patriots party, Florian Philippot, both linked the rejected shipment to the EU-Mercosur trade agreement, which began provisional application on 1 May.
According to Zajączkowska-Hernik, the shipment is an example of the trade agreement “in practice”, accusing the EU-Mercosur deal of “poisoning people for the sake of German economic interests”.
Philippot said the the shipment, which never made it into Poland, was “worm-infested”, despite Polish inspectors not stating which live pests were in the cargo.
Zajączkowska-Hernik’s post was picked up by Polish right-wing political commentary website wPolityce, which also claimed the shipment was “worm-infested”.
However, official responses and publicly available trade data reviewed by The Cube, Euronews’ fact-checking team, show that claims the shipment was linked to the EU-Mercosur trade deal are unsubstantiated.
Green coffee already entered EU tariff-free
Critics of the EU-Mercosur deal, which removes import duties on goods traded between the EU and Mercosur countries, argue that reduced tariffs will flood Europe with agricultural products that do not meet European standards, and place additional pressure on European food inspection systems and farmers.
But publicly available documents show that green coffee — the separated, raw seeds of coffee cherries that are then roasted — already entered the EU tariff-free long before EU-Mercosur’s provisional application began.
According to UN Comtrade data, Brazil exported more than 15 million kilograms of green coffee to Poland in 2024 alone.
A report published in 2011 by the International Coffee Organization notes that “non-decaffeinated green coffee can be imported tariff-free into the European Union”, while processed coffee incurs a higher tariff.
A separate trade analysis, published in February 2026, by the United States Department of Agriculture also stated that “green coffee beans, which make up 97 percent of Brazil’s coffee exports to the EU, already enter the European market tariff-free”.
Did the shipment enter under EU-Mercosur rules?
In response to Euronews, IJHARS said the shipment underwent “standard commercial quality inspection”, carried out under existing national rules.
The agency did not say the shipment entered Poland under preferential trade conditions linked to the EU-Mercosur agreement, adding that customs-related matters fall under the responsibility of tax and customs authorities.
IJHARS also said that it’s not unusual for it to intercept food products that do not meet standards. The agency issued 95 decisions blocking imported food shipments in 2025 alone, impacting 121 batches of food that were set to enter Poland from non-EU countries.
Brazil’s ambassador to the EU, Pedro Miguel da Costa e Silva, rejected claims linking the shipment to the EU-Mercosur agreement.
“Green coffee already entered the EU under a zero tariff rate. Nothing changed,” he told Euronews. He added that Brazil had exported green coffee to Europe “since the 19th century”.
Critics of the EU-Mercosur agreement have continued to raise concerns about food safety, agricultural imports and the financial security of European farmers, who have argued that cheaper agricultural products from Mercosur countries, which include Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia, could undercut their livelihoods.
However despite online claims, the available evidence does not show that this specific coffee shipment was in any way connected to the EU-Mercosur trade agreement.