June 25, 2008

EU fumes at Russia's ban on 70 meat exporters

The Russian ban on 70 EU meat companies was arbitrarily imposed and was based more on self interest, EU officials said Tuesday (June 24, 2008), ahead of an EU-Russia summit.

The problems emerged in April, according to European Commission officials, when Moscow began refusing certain imports because they contained traces of antibiotics.

Now 70 companies, from seven EU nations - Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Spain – with produce worth more than EUR 100 million to be shipped to Russia, have been banned, one official said.

Although Russia has the right to refuse food with traces of antibiotics, there must be clear rules which are not applied in an arbitrary manner, an official said.

The worst-hit country is Denmark, which has seen its pork exports to Russia halved to the ban hitting its biggest exporters.

An official, pointing to the fact that the bans were announced after Russia went on a drive to boost self-sufficiency, said the country may be implementing the ban to boost its own national producers.

He said the matter would be brought up at the EU-Russia summit in Siberia on Friday.

The EU and Russia will give the formal go-ahead for talks on a new strategic partnership accord at the summit.  Poland held up the start of the talks for much of last year due to the Russian embargo on its meat

The ban on Polish meat was lifted in January after Poland dropped objections to Moscow beginning talks on membership of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.