December 19, 2006

EU delegates to avert beef trade row with Russia
 

The European Union's health commissioner Markos Kyprianou will visit Moscow on Tuesday, Dec 19, to meet with Russia's agriculture minister Alexei Gordeyev in an effort to avert possible overall ban of European beef and other animal product exports.

Russia has threatened to ban beef and other animal products from the EU over health standards of Bulgarian and Romanian beef. The two nations join the EU next year. It has even banned Polish meat imports.

The EC hopes for a positive outcome from the meeting between EU health commissioner and Russian officials.

A wider Russian ban on all imports of EU meat, dairy and fish products would affect some EUR 1.7 billion (US$2.2 billion) in annual trade, according to the EU. The ban threat led Poland to veto the signing of a wide-ranging EU-Russia partnership and co-operation agreement (PCA) on Nov 24.

EU states have so far refrained from signing any bilateral deals that would bypass the EC, which has responsibility for negotiating EU trade agreements.

At the EU summit on Dec 14 in Brussels, Polish President Lech Kaczynski raised hopes that an agreement was imminent to which other EU nations responded with resistance. The Commission said it would view any bilateral agreement with Russia as illegal.