Russia lifts EU meat ban, with conditions
government has agreed that it will be lifted, at the same time as
setting a new deadline in its demands for a more harmonious EU food
safety certification.
Following its week-long ban on all EU meat imports, the Russian government has agreed that it will lift it, at the same time as setting a new deadline for its demands for a more harmonious EU food safety certification.
Russian authorities say they are getting increasingly frustrated at having to deal with veterinary certificates which they say have become increasingly difficult to handle. The current system means that food safety certificates for meat are issued by individual countries in the EU.
The Russian authorities say they find this process too time consuming and complicated and that the EU should have one form of certification for all its 25 members. In response the European Commission has said that according to its laws each member state is individually responsible for its own food safety certification.
Last week the Russian authorities banned meat imports from half of the existing EU members - including France, Germany, Czech Republic, Latvia, Estonia and Poland, causing many meat producers in those countries to react angrily to the move.
However, after lengthy negotiations between the EU authorities and the Russian Agricultural Ministry, the European Commission says that it now expects to receive written confirmation that the ban has been lifted within the next couple days. However, the Russian authorities are setting a time-frame for a suitable long-term resolution to the spat.
"The ban will be re-introduced from 1 October if there is no new agreement," an European Commission spokesman told the BBC.
In its defense, the European Commission has said that due to the recent enlargement of Europe, the streamlining of all its food safety programmes has been delayed. In response to this the Russian authorities said that they recognised that the EU would need a transitional period, which is why it gave the EU another four months to resolve the problem.
Currently the EU estimates its meat trade with Russia to be valued at €1.3 billion, providing the country with over half of its pork imports and 80 per cent of its beef imports. This year total meat imports from the EU to Russia have been set at 205,000 tons of poultry, 227,300 tons of pork and 331,800 tons of beef, according to the Russian National Meat Association.
