"The (European) Commission fixed the refund too low for us to be competitive against the United States and left us with nothing again." "Yes, demand is low right now, but we've only got two months before the Australian and Argentine harvests arrive so it's now or never -- we have to be aggressive," he added.

The EU grains panel set a free-market wheat refund of 33.97 euros per tonne, surprising the bulk of the trade by accepting Danish bids which undercut the lowest French bid of 34.10 euros. That released just 21,500 tonnes of wheat for export and priced October French wheat at $98.50 fob, a full dollar above competing US soft red winter wheat, according to EU officials.

"It was messed up by three greedy bidders inDenmark," said another trader. "I'm very disappointed but what can you do?" "I'm really annoyed. The EU is supposed to give around 3,00,000 tonnes in wheat licences a week and this is the fourth week they've left us high and dry," a third trader said.

French bids were judged fairly restrained, since even the lowest bid undercut US prices, but exporters said that after three weeks of paltry tonnages in free-market wheat they had expected the Commission to respond to a push for higher refunds. The low Danish bids also meant the trade got a smaller amount of wheat licences for African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries than it had banked on. French traders had based their ACP bids on the lowest French main tender offer of 34.10 and expected to get the entire 111,500 tonnes bid for, since their highest ACP bid was within seven euros of that offer.