EU and Russia end meat import stand-off
halt imports of EU beef, pork and poultry worth $1.4 billion a
year.
The dispute centred over Russia's insistence that meat imports from the 25 EU countries use a uniform veterinary certificate instead of separate certificates from individual EU countries. Russia warned that it would re-introduce a ban on EU meat exports at the end of this month if it did not receive further guarantees of the safety of EU meat.
But meetings between EU commissioner for health and consumer protection David Byrne, Dutch agriculture minister Cees Veerman and his Russian counterpart Alexei Gordeyev have proved fruitful. Russia has now retracted the threat of a meat boycott under the condition that the European Union installs the uniform certificate by 30 September 2004.
"The way is now clear for uninterrupted trade in legitimate and safe food products from the EU to Russia," said EU Commissioner David Byrne.
This is good news for the EU's meat producers. The bloc accounts for 20 per cent of Russia's poultry imports, 78 per cent of its beef imports, and 50 per cent of its pork imports.
Agreed was reached largely because the EU accepted that Russia was entitled to impose conditions on slaughterhouses wishing to export their products to Russia. EC spokesperson Beate Gminder was quoted in the Polish News Bulletin yesterday as saying that "the basic principle of international trade says: if you want to export something, you must respect the law of the importing country".
Under the new agreement, Russia will provide uniform certificates to be used by all EU countries exporting meat to Russia, with particular attention to certifying products originating in one country and processed in another. Details will be worked out over a three-month transitional period.
In return, Russia has agreed that any animal disease outbreaks contained within a country will not result in a block on exports from the entire whole country, nor from the rest of the EU.
Russia's ministry of agriculture has long sought the introduction of a single EU veterinary certificate on health standards approved by the Commission, rather than have each EU member state impose its own standards, which should then meet common European health requirements.
In June, Russia briefly banned exports of 16 animal products from a dozen EU countries, an unexpected move that angered the EU, especially as it came shortly after the EU's endorsement of Russia's entry into the World Trade Organisation. "Any disruption of trade is unnecessary and unjustified," said chief Commission spokesman Reijo Kemppinen at the time. "This kind of behaviour is not the behaviour one would expect from a potential WTO member."
Russia then agreed to lift the ban and leave a few months for talks to try to resolve the dispute.
There has been unease from former Communist bloc countries such as Poland that Russia's concern over meat imports is a symptom of the country's political unease about the recent EU enlargement. Genuine health concerns, they say, are of secondary importance.
But concerns about hygiene standards in some food factories in former Communist countries have prompted EU action. In the Czech Republic for example, over 500 food processing plants were shut down at the end of 2003, largely due to food safety and hygiene standards failing to meet European Union regulations.
The European Commission said in its November report that the state of food safety in the Czech Republic was the biggest remaining problem before the country's entrance to the EU in May.
However, the Commission maintains that EU labelling and monitoring rules guarantee that products from establishments with potentially inadequate safety standards cannot be exported, even to other EU countries.
