Sheep plague costs Romania €128 million

In six Croatian counties, sheep farmers have spent the past two weeks pouring milk down the drain. Their animals are healthy, but veterinary restrictions mean no one can collect the milk. Across the border, Romania's national sheep and goat breeders' federation says the sector has already lost €128 million because export channels are blocked (Digi24). That is a sector claim, not an independently verified number. But the pain behind it is spreading across southeastern Europe.

How PPR Freezes Trade

The disease driving this is PPR, peste des petits ruminants, a highly contagious virus that attacks sheep and goats with fever, mouth lesions and pneumonia. It does not threaten human health. The problem is movement: every animal shipped from an infected area can seed a new outbreak elsewhere (WOAH).

The EU single market is often described as the removal of borders. For live animals, borders were replaced by something else: veterinary trust. A Romanian sheep can enter Italy only if Romanian vets certify where it came from and that disease controls there are reliable. PPR is a listed disease under the EU Animal Health Law (Regulation 2016/429), which means it triggers mandatory Europe-wide controls. When that certification breaks down, trade stops not at a customs post, but at the veterinary office.

Romania's national veterinary authority imposed a 30-day quarantine on all sheep and goats, with limited exceptions for direct slaughter. That quarantine is national, so healthy flocks in unaffected regions are commercially trapped alongside infected ones.

EU rules allow for precise zoning: protection zones, surveillance zones, restriction zones, each designed so unaffected areas can keep trading. Romania's blanket approach suggests authorities cannot yet draw those lines with confidence.

A Corridor Under Stress

So far, the evidence points less to Romania's rivals gaining market share than to a regional livestock corridor under collective stress. Bulgaria cannot export sheep and goats until the end of September, and Greece faces similar constraints until the end of October (Agri.bg). Bulgaria hosted a THRACE programme meeting on cross-border disease control with Greece and Turkey, treating the problem as a shared frontier risk rather than one country's failure.

Hungary is in defensive mode. Hungarian agricultural sources describe the priority as preserving disease-free status, cracking down on illegal shipments and checking documentation at every step (Agrárágazat, VG). Disease-free status is itself an economic asset: if Hungary loses it, its own export-oriented sheep sector hits the same wall (Agro Napló).

Croatia shows the sharpest bite. Protection and surveillance zones in six counties halted milk collection entirely. The producers' association Ruka demanded 100% compensation for lost deliveries. No official settlement has been confirmed.

Who Pays When Certification Fails

The costs fall on farmers, hauliers, assembly centres and milk processors, everyone whose business depends on animals moving. The benefits are collective but abstract: every country that avoids an outbreak preserves its own export access. The losses are immediate and concentrated on the people doing the least to cause them.

One detail from Romanian reporting makes the credibility problem concrete. Hungarian-language Romanian media reported that 75 sheep registered as culled in Tulcea county were found alive on a farm in Cluj county. That kind of enforcement failure poisons the trust that EU certification rules are built on. And it is trust, not tariffs, that determines whether Romania's export channels reopen.

For live animals, the single market runs on something more fragile than regulation. It runs on the credibility of national veterinary systems. When that credibility cracks in one country, the damage radiates across every neighbour whose herds, trade routes and disease-free status are entangled with it. Romania's breeders are paying the steepest price, but the Balkan corridor as a whole is learning what it costs when that invisible infrastructure fails.