Eu requirements and the competitiveness of ukrainian grain: consequences of non-compliance and adaptation scenarios

<jats:p>The purpose of the article is to substantiate a conceptual and analytical framework for assessing how European Union requirements affect the competitiveness of Ukrainian grain. The study applies documentary-institutional, comparative, and scenario analyses to EU legislation, Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed materials, sector reports, and peer-reviewed research. It distinguishes the trade regime from mandatory food and feed safety requirements, phytosanitary control, statutory traceability, and private contractual specifications. The results show that the economic consequences of non-compliance depend on the legal nature of the requirement, the stage at which a deviation is detected, the possibility of corrective action and the preservation of batch identity. Regulatory non-compliance may restrict circulation or change the permitted destination of grain, whereas deviations from contractual parameters more often lead to reconditioning, price discounts or rejection by the buyer. A verified RASFF notification concerning chlorpyrifos in bulgur exported from Ukraine is used only to illustrate the operation of food-control rules and not to estimate the prevalence of violations in Ukrainian grain exports. Three organizational profiles are compared: direct export, a coordinated chain involving an elevator or trader, and sale to an aggregator. Compliance capacity is determined primarily by control over testing, segregation, records, and data access rather than by farm size alone. Formalized contractual coordination can partly substitute for owned laboratories and storage infrastructure when responsibilities and procedures are clearly allocated. Loss of batch identity is identified as more consequential than a recoverable documentary gap because laboratory evidence can no longer be linked to the physical grain lot. The novelty lies in integrating regulatory, contractual, and organizational channels into a single batch-level framework. The decline in the EU’s share of Ukrainian grain exports in 2025 is attributable to the compliance channel and is mainly due to quotas and changes in the trade regime. Practical adaptation should combine preventive testing, segregated storage, interoperable batch records and contracts that allocate compliance functions among supply-chain participants. Further research should quantify compliance costs and realized losses using consignment- and contract-level data. Keywords: grain, EU requirements, competitiveness, non-compliance, traceability, contractual coordination.</jats:p>