EU food producers body COPA-COGECA has welcomed the likely accession of Russia to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), following a weekend deal over membership struck with Georgia.
The two countries agreed on a compromise deal, which focuses on trade between Russia and two Georgian rebel regions it supports, worked out with the help of Swiss mediators.
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This was the last key obstacle preventing Russia joining the WTO, which could take place at a Geneva ministerial meeting in December.
This would lead to Russia reducing food tariffs across the board, and adopting internationally-agreed rules on licensing, guarantees, technical regulations and health standards.
In particular, accession should impede Russia from imposing swift health-based bans on EU food exports. In the past five years these have ranged from bans on Polish meat, Norwegian salmon, foreign rice and the most recently on EU fruit and vegetables following May’s e-coli outbreak, which was lifted in August.
Spokesperson Amanda Cheesley said: “This should be favourable in that it should stabilise our trading relationship. It should reduce the amount of disputes. In recent years there have been a lot of bans.”
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By GlobalDataAlthough Ukraine has now raised fresh concerns about Russian WTO membership, European Commission trade spokesman John Clancy said the process remained “on track”. He also welcomed the potential benefits in managing and controlling Russian health-based import bans.
