EU Urges Russia to Take the High Road Toward WTO Commitments
Russia, which acceded to the World Trade Organization two weeks ago, now has the choice of taking the high road or the low, European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said Sept. 7 at a seminar on EU-Russia trade and economic relations in Helsinki, Finland. The low road would be a “minimalist approach” to its WTO commitments, one that seeks to limit the impacts on companies it now artificially protects, he said. The less Russia reforms its business environment, the harder it will be for internationally competitive companies to develop, he said.
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Russia “needs to understand that frustrating the very competition that WTO membership is intended to promote would have more direct consequences,” De Gucht said. In that regard, the EU is seriously concerned about three import matters, he said. One is the decree on fees for recycling cars, he said. Europe supports the environmental objective here, but has grave concerns about levying fees on imported vehicles alone, which discriminates against European producers and clashes with the most basic WTO rules, he said.
A second gripe is Russia's ban on live animal imports, De Gucht said. It's a clear case of a “regulatory measure acting as a tool of trade protection,” he said. The ban is disproportionate to risks it purports to address, particularly the prohibition on live pigs, which rests on small irregularities found during inspections and lacks any valid scientific basis, he said. The ban is especially important for the EU as nearly 10% of its total agricultural products go to Russia, he said.
The third EU worry is that Russia will resort abusively to trade defense procedures on steel products, commercial vehicles and combine harvesters, De Gucht said. Russia has launched two anti-dumping cases and one safeguard case in recent months, and the EU has serious doubts about all three, he said.
All these measures affect products where significant market opening is due to take place under Russia WTO commitment, De Gucht said. “This is the wrong signal to send” as liberalization is supposed to be moving forward, he said. He urged Russia to take the high road to greater prosperity and stronger links with the EU.