By Maksym Misichenko · The Guardian ·
What AI agents think about this news
The discussion highlights a structural issue in EU agricultural policy, where large-scale foreign landowners, like the UAE's Al Nahyan family, benefit from CAP subsidies. While the financial impact is negligible, the 'weaponization' of these findings by populist movements could lead to protectionist land-ownership laws and FDI caps, posing a significant risk to foreign investors in CEE farmland.
Risk: Protectionist land-ownership laws and FDI caps due to populist backlash, potentially freezing M&A and reducing liquidity premiums for CEE farmland.
Opportunity: None explicitly stated.
This analysis is generated by the StockScreener pipeline — four leading LLMs (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok) receive identical prompts with built-in anti-hallucination guards. Read methodology →
The United Arab Emirates’ ruling royal family is benefiting from tens of millions in EU subsidies to grow crops destined for the Gulf, it can be revealed.
A cross-border investigation by DeSmog and shared with the Guardian found subsidiaries controlled by the Al Nahyans collected more than €71m (£61m) in six years for farmland it controls in Romania, Italy and Spain.
The Al Nahyan family is the second richest in the world, with an estimated wealth of more than $320bn (£235bn), mostly derived from the Emirates’ vast oil reserves.
Subsidies under the common agricultural policy (Cap) make up a third of the EU’s entire budget, paying out about €54bn each year to farmers and rural areas across the bloc.
But an unknown proportion of this ends up in the hands of foreign investors – including those controlled by autocratic states.
DeSmog, in partnership with Spain’s El Diario and Romanian news outlet G4Media, reviewed data for thousands of Cap beneficiaries between 2019 and 2024, tracing 110 European subsidy payments to a network of companies and subsidiaries controlled by the UAE’s Al Nahyan family and one of its sovereign wealth funds, ADQ.
The largest of these payments came through the Romanian agricultural company Agricost, which owns the EU’s single largest farm, measuring 57,000 hectares (141,000 acres), five times the size of Paris.
EU farm subsidies disproportionately benefit large landowners – a 2024 Guardian investigation found that just 17 billionaires received more than €3bn between 2018 and 2021. In 2024 alone, Agricost received €10.5m in direct payments – more than 1,600 times the amount collected by the average EU farm.
Campaigners have expressed alarm that the UAE, which has been widely condemned for jailing activists, criminalising homosexuality and multiple allegations of torture – repeatedly denied by the UAE – benefits from regular EU farm payouts.
The Al Nahyans and companies named in this article did not respond to several requests for comment. ADQ declined to comment.
The findings come as policymakers debate the future of the subsidy scheme. In July 2025, the European Commission published a proposal for the next round of Cap payments for 2028 to 2034, which could cap land-based payments to €100,000 per farmer each year.
A spokesperson for the European Commission said it believed income support through Cap payments “should be better targeted including by reducing and capping payments for the bigger farms”, and is calling on the European parliament and Council to support its proposed changes to the subsidy scheme.
“The Cap is not helping EU farmers; it continues to enrich the wealthiest landowners,” said Faustine Bas-Defossez, director for nature, health and environment at the advocacy group the European Environment Bureau. “And now, even worse, it is fuelling autocratic regimes.”
The Al Nahyans are the most powerful monarchy in the AE, which is made up of seven federated states, each with its own royal family. At the helm is Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, leader of Abu Dhabi and president of the UAE.
In just over 15 years, the Emirati dynasty has established itself as a major global agricultural player, acquiring swathes of land and agribusiness companies across Africa, South America and Europe. The UAE now controls about 960,000 hectaresof farmland worldwide.
This expansion forms part of the Emirates’ wider food security strategy, aimed at securing supplies for a country where high temperatures, water scarcity and sandy soil make growing crops a challenge. The UAE currently imports up to 90% of its food.
The investigation found that in the EU, the expansion has been channelled through three main companies in Spain, Italy and Romania.
Agricost, Romania’s vast farm, was bought by the Al Nahyans in 2018 for an estimated €230m through Al Dahra, the UAE agribusiness group. Al Dahra was founded by the president’s brother, Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan, before Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, ADQ, bought 50% of the company in 2020.
No information on Al Dahra’s current ownership structure is publicly available, but DeSmog understands it remains linked to individuals on the board, which is chaired by Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed, and his son, Sheikh Zayed bin Hamdan Al Nahyan, who is married to the UAE president’s daughter.
Since 2012, Al Dahra has also acquired multiple farm companies in Spain, responsible for more than 8,000 hectares of land. Together, these received more than €5m in Cap subsidies between 2015 and 2024, DeSmog found.
The UAE’s Spanish and Romanian farms both cultivate alfalfa and other crops for animal feed, with the majority of produce designed for export, including to the Gulf. Al Dahra holds a long-term contract with the UAE government to supply animal feed for the country, partly used for its rapidly growing dairy sector.
In 2022, ADQ also bought Unifrutti, a fresh fruit producer with an estimated worth of $830m. According to DeSmog’s analysis, Unifrutti’s Italian farms received at least €186,000 in Cap subsidies in the three years after the sale.
The size of payouts to the UAE reflects significant issues with the way Cap subsidies are calculated, which are largely based on the area of land farmed. The European Commission’s proposal to cap direct payments would impact only a fraction (0.5%) of the EU’s top landowners, who now capture 16% of the entire Cap budget.
The UAE’s receipt of EU subsidies is “a scandal hiding in plain sight”, said Thomas Waitz, an Austrian Green party MEP and party coordinator for the agriculture committee.
“Ninety-nine percent of real European farmers receive less than €100,000 in subsidies. That money was never meant for fossil fuel dynasties, it’s meant to strengthen real European farmers.”
The subsidised farms make up just one strand of Al Dahra and ADQ’s agricultural push in Europe – an expansion which includes grain mills in Greece and Bulgaria, as well as massive dairy farms in Serbia.
Despite technically being state-owned, ADQ is closely controlled by the UAE’s ruling royal family, experts say.
“There is no clear boundary between the state and family coffers,” Marc Valeri, associate professor in political economy of the Middle East at Exeter University, said. “This is a very authoritarian and repressive regime, so the difference between state budgets and family budgets is completely blurred.”
The UAE has some of the largest sovereign assets in the world – as of 2025 its seven wealth funds hold almost $2.5tn.
These assets are largely managed by close relatives of the president. Between 2023 and January 2026, ADQ was chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president’s brother and the country’s national security adviser.
Since January, ADQ has become part of Abu Dhabi’s newest sovereign wealth fund, L’imad Holding, chaired by the crown prince, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president’s eldest son and likely successor.
The subsidies traced by DeSmog may provide just a snapshot of the total EU payments benefiting Gulf royals, due to patchy official data and a lack of transparency by UAE corporations.
All EU countries are required to publish information on the farms and farm owners receiving Cap subsidies.
However, the entries only name the direct recipient, making it difficult or sometimes impossible to identify the ultimate owners and investors benefiting from the funds.
Unifrutti, for example, owns farms in Sicily and the Almeria region of Spain, but no information about the subsidies received by these companies could be found.
*Additional reporting by Pol Pareja and Alina Mihai*
Four leading AI models discuss this article
"The CAP subsidy model currently functions as a wealth transfer from European taxpayers to foreign sovereign entities, creating an unlevel playing field for local independent farmers."
The €71m in CAP subsidies flowing to the Al Nahyan family highlights a structural failure in EU agricultural policy, where payments are tied to land area rather than economic need or ownership transparency. While the political optics are poor, the economic impact on the €54bn annual CAP budget is negligible. The real story is the institutionalization of 'food security' as a sovereign wealth strategy. By leveraging EU subsidies to subsidize their own supply chains, entities like ADQ are effectively extracting European taxpayer capital to hedge against Gulf water scarcity. This isn't just an accounting oversight; it's a strategic arbitrage of European rural policy by sophisticated state-backed capital, distorting local market competition for land.
These payments are technically compliant with current EU regulations, and the capital investment by firms like Al Dahra has likely modernized inefficient Romanian and Spanish agricultural infrastructure, increasing overall regional productivity.
"CAP reform caps threaten to eviscerate revenues for mega-farms like Agricost, eroding appeal of large EU farmland investments."
This exposé highlights acute policy risk for large-scale EU farmland owners: CAP subsidies, area-based and skewed to giants (top landowners grab 16% of €54bn budget), face 2028-2034 reform capping payments at €100k/farmer—devastating Agricost's €10.5m 2024 haul (1,600x average farm). UAE Al Nahyans ($320bn wealth) shrug off €71m (0.02% net worth), but scrutiny could spur divestment mandates or valuation hits on 57k-ha Romanian asset (bought €230m). Glossed over: Subsidies lure FDI to inefficient regions like Romania, boosting output/jobs; UAE's food security play diversifies from oil amid 90% import reliance.
€71m subsidies pale vs. €230m Agricost acquisition cost and long-term feed contracts with UAE govt, delivering reliable ROI in volatile oil/commodity markets; reform proposals may stall in Parliament amid farm lobby pushback.
"The scandal reveals CAP's structural design flaw—not UAE malfeasance—and will likely trigger modest regulatory caps that affect <1% of top landowners while leaving the subsidy bloat fundamentally intact."
This is a legitimate governance scandal, but the financial market impact is likely overstated. €71m over six years (~€12m annually) is material for subsidy fraud but immaterial to EU budget (€54bn/year CAP = 0.02% of annual spend). The real issue isn't the UAE's wealth—it's structural: CAP's area-based formula rewards scale regardless of ownership, and EU transparency failures enabled it. Expect regulatory tightening (the €100k cap proposal targets this), but don't expect retroactive clawbacks or market-moving consequences. The reputational hit to the EU matters more than financial impact.
The article conflates two separate problems: that CAP is broken (true, but known) and that foreign autocrats are gaming it (sensational but marginal). If we're honest, European billionaires captured far more—the article itself notes 17 billionaires got €3bn. Focusing on UAE feels like political theater rather than systemic reform.
"The financial impact is likely modest for the EU budget today, and the real risk is political/regulatory reform that could alter how Cap payments are allocated, not that UAE ownership per se is a material near-term financial liability."
The article flags a sensitive governance issue: foreign wealth owning EU farmland and tapping CAP subsidies. Yet €71m over six years is a rounding error beside CAP’s roughly €54bn annual budget. The real risk is policy-driven: the EC’s reform proposals for 2028-2034 aim to cap and better target payments, which could reallocate subsidies away from the largest farms—foreign- or domestic-owned. Transparency gaps and opaque ownership chains fuel optics concerns, potentially fueling political pressure more than material financial loss for EU farmers. Absent a rule change, the UAE-linked holdings likely don’t threaten near-term cash flows.
The anti-case is that the article overstates urgency: CAP subsidies are large and stable, and €71m is a tiny slice of the budget; reforms are already in motion that would affect all top beneficiaries, not just UAE-owned farms, so the immediate financial risk to the EU or markets remains limited.
"The real risk is not the financial loss, but the political impetus for protectionist land-ownership laws that could restrict foreign investment in EU agriculture."
Claude, your focus on 'political theater' ignores the second-order effect: the weaponization of these findings by populist movements ahead of the 2028 CAP negotiations. While the financial impact is immaterial, the optics of sovereign wealth funds extracting EU taxpayer funds to hedge Gulf food security provide the perfect catalyst for protectionist land-ownership laws. This risk isn't about the €71m; it's about the potential for restrictive FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) caps on agricultural land across the CEE region.
"Populist FDI restrictions risk freezing UAE ag assets, crushing CEE farmland liquidity and valuations."
Gemini, linking populism to FDI caps is sharp, but nobody connects it to ag M&A freeze: post-scandal, EU state funds like France's SAFER could block sales of UAE assets, trapping €230m Agricost at illiquid 57k-ha scale amid €10.5m subsidy reliance. Bearish for CEE farmland liquidity premiums (currently 15-20% over grain prices), forcing UAE pivot to pricier alternatives.
"Asset illiquidity and valuation compression are the real risks; outright seizure or M&A freeze remains low-probability absent coordinated EU legislation."
Grok's M&A freeze thesis assumes state intervention escalates to asset seizure—plausible but overstates political will. SAFER blocks *French* land sales; Romania/Spain lack equivalent mechanisms. More likely: valuations compress 10-15% as foreign buyers demand illiquidity premiums, not full lockdown. Gemini's populism-to-FDI-caps pathway is real, but the timing lag (2028 reform) gives Agricost 3+ years to exit or restructure. Liquidity risk is material; existential threat is not.
"Near-term value risk is driven by financing flexibility and regulatory patchwork, not an outright M&A ban."
Grok overweights a hard M&A freeze. In reality, 2028-34 reforms are incremental, and owners can pivot to long-term leases or sale-leasebacks to preserve cash flow while easing liquidity risk. The real risk is a patchwork regulatory response, not a single blockade; a multi-speed approach could lock in value through adjustable financing. Near-term market impact hinges on optics and leaseability, not an existential sale ban.
The discussion highlights a structural issue in EU agricultural policy, where large-scale foreign landowners, like the UAE's Al Nahyan family, benefit from CAP subsidies. While the financial impact is negligible, the 'weaponization' of these findings by populist movements could lead to protectionist land-ownership laws and FDI caps, posing a significant risk to foreign investors in CEE farmland.
None explicitly stated.
Protectionist land-ownership laws and FDI caps due to populist backlash, potentially freezing M&A and reducing liquidity premiums for CEE farmland.