Once EU enlargement is completed, on 1 May this year, EU grain quotas will also impact accession country. This means that existing Russian grain export markets will be impacted. Instead of buying in grains from Russia, larger grain consuming accession nations such as Hungary and Poland will have to buy grain from within the enlarged EU and other approved markets such as North America and Canada.
The Russian Agricultural Ministry also highlighted the fact that the new quotas may bar Russian meat processors access to the newly enlarged EU, as meat quotas will also have to fall in line with that of the existing 15 EU Member States.
The Ministry emphasised the fact that the quota enforcement and issues of quality worked both ways, the Russian news agency TASS reported. The Ministry said that it would strive to obtain guarantees of safety for all imported foodstuffs from an enlarged EU and that, with EU borders rapidly encroaching upon the Russian frontiers, comprehensive controls regulations would have to be drawn up.
At the beginning of 2003, the Russian Agricultural Ministry denied that a move to restrict EU meat imports was deliberately enforced as a tit-for-tat move against a reduction in Russian grain imports. The EU measure introduced a grain import quota of 600,000 tons of Russian grain a year. However, after a disastrous grain harvest throughout Russian and the Ukraine grain belts, the reduced quotas were not even met.
However, if Russian grain harvests pick up in 2004, the Ministry's current warning on grain quotas could prove to be far more of an issue. Such a situation could well lead to retaliatory moves, if the Ministry's comments are anything to go by.