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Friday, 10.06.2011
EU-Russia Summit: Cucumber embargo soon over
Nizhny Novgorod. The EU-Russia summit in Nizhny Novgorod is yielding some results: The Russian vegetable ban is close to be removed; visa free travel remains a theory and Russia's WTO entry has been postponed again.
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The results of the two day negotiations in the Volga city Nizhny Novgorod are not particularly encouraging for Russia. One quick success is on the horizon, if the EU delivers quality certificates for its vegetables, Russia will lift its import ban.
Tomatoes for the summit participants
This good news was announced at the closing press conference with the President of the Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso.
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The EU and Russia will have to agree on the certification requirements, than nothing would be in the way of resuming deliveries.
Medvedev promised: Very soon specialists from Russia and the EU will create a certificate that will guarantee the safety of the products delivered to the Russian market. With regards to the Russian specialists he added, 'you know them very well, they are popular in our country for certain reasons.
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He meant Russia's chief medical officer, Gennadi Onishchenko, who also took part at the summit. Onishchenko had bitterly criticized the EU quality control policy on food and thus had created quite some sensation.
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At the last dinner of the summit, Medvedev served tomatoes without explaining their origins. Let's see what will happen, he joked.
WTO: ”We pretty much had enough of it”
Even as Medvedev assesses the 27th Russia-EU summit politically as 'substantial and useful', in other important questions no progress had been made. Medvedev could hardly hide his anger on the lack of progress in the issue over Russia's World Trade Organisation membership.
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We are negotiating already for 17 years over the question of WTO membership. We are all incredibly tired of it and are hoping every year to reach the end of the negotiations, Medvedev states truthfully. And asks for support:
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“Even as Russia has fulfilled all requirements, this process is dragging on. We hope for support over this issue from our European colleagues. There is a 'good chance' to end this procedure by the end of the year.”
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The issue of the vegetable ban has a negative effect on Russia's WTO membership, as it had been criticised severely by Brussels. Maybe the immediate lifting of the ban could salvage some of the damage caused.
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Visa free travel: “There is still a lot to be done”
Medvedev made the best of a bad situation when talking about visa free travel between Russia and the EU. He had 'not receive any concrete promises', he admits, but there had been some progress. However, ”a lot of work lies ahead”.
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By the end of June, a plan should be developed on how to manage the approach on visa free travel. First of all there will be “visa facilitation for different categories of Russian citizens” such as students and business travelers.
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With regards to the visa issue in the Kaliningrad region, Medvedev contradicts his tandem partner and at the same time opponent in the presidential elections, Vladimir Putin: Medvedev thinks it is possible to reach an agreement with the EU on the border crossing. Putin recently had simply rejected this and thus angered the people in Kaliningrad
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