Russia, EU seek to heal trade rift at summit
Russia - EU
(NIZHNY NOVGOROD) - EU and Russian leaders arrived for a tense summit here on Thursday seeking to overcome a venomous row over Moscow's ban on EU vegetable imports that has opened a new rift between the two sides.
A chronic lack of progress in talks over a visa-free regime and a new cooperation agreement had already been expected to cast a pall over the two-day summit in the central Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod.
But after the European Union reacted with fury to Russia's ban on its vegetables in the wake of the E. coli outbreak, this week's biannual negotiations may be especially uncomfortable.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met with the President of European Council Herman Van Rompuy and President of European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso near the historic Nizhny Novgorod fortress overlooking the Volga river.
The leaders briefly admired the view before going inside a building for dinner talks, expected to be followed by a Volga river cruise before official talks start Friday.
A source in the Russian delegation underlined the awkward atmosphere ahead of the talks, describing the EU reaction as "abnormal" and suggesting its diplomats should publicly eat European cucumbers.
"They in Brussels can start a public procedure of eating all cucumbers without exception without testing. We'll applaud them," the source said.
Russia, the largest market for EU vegetables, last week imposed a blanket ban on imports to prevent the spread of the E. coli bacteria that has left at least 30 people dead and more than 2,800 sick.
Critics have repeatedly accused Moscow of using import bans on produce as tools to pursue political goals. The ban comes after Russia's repeated calls to scrap the visa regime with the European Union have met with silence.
Progress over a new cooperation treaty, to replace one in force since 1997, is also lacking.
"The strategic nature of Russia-EU relations calls for a greater trust between us including in the visa field," the Kremlin said in a sharply worded statement released on the eve of the talks.
The Kremlin chalked up the lack of progress on a new cooperation agreement to Brussels' insistence on including in the document over-detailed "texts on trade and investment cooperation."
Timofei Bordachev, director of the Moscow-based Centre for Comprehensive European and International Studies, said the lack of trust was so obvious that officials in Brussels had privately discussed the idea of reducing the number of Russia-EU summits from two to one a year.
"Both Russian and European representatives supposedly agree with this idea but neither side is ready to be the first to announce the initiative," Bordachev wrote in the Kommersant daily.
Medvedev's top foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko said ahead of the meeting that the EU "was not ready for a political decision to cancel visas with Russia," acknowledging however that the bloc has made steps to ease visa restrictions.
Adding to the tensions on trade, Russia is also frustrated by its 18-year-long accession process to the World Trade Organisation which has left it as the largest economy to remain outside the body.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ordered officials to ignore the trade body's rules until the country is admitted and dismissed suggestions that its most recent ban on EU vegetables was against the spirit of WTO membership.
The Russian and EU leaders will also discuss the so-called Partnership for Modernisation programme, an initiative launched last year with an eye to tightening economic cooperation in areas like energy efficiency and support for small and medium-sized businesses.
In a statement released ahead of the talks, Barroso said the summit will "back it (the programme) with 2 billion euros ($2.9 billion) of concrete funding."
Several banks from both Russia and EU, including Russia's state development bank VEB as well as the EBRD and the European Investment Bank, are expected to provide the financing.
EBRD and VEB said earlier this year they would consider committing up to $500 million each to the project.
Partial recovery of trade in goods between EU27 and Russia in 2010 [Eurostat]