Ireland badly hit by Russian food ban

Ireland is one of only three EU member states which suffered a trade setback of more than 70% due to the Russian embargo on EU food imports.

Last week, official EU statistics for EU-28 agri-food exports showed an overall 41% fall in exports, when comparing the August to February period in 2013-14 to 2014-15.

But Irish exports fell 70% in value, from 119m to 36m.

Only Denmark, with a 75% cut in trade, and Cyprus, with a 97% reduction, were hit harder in percentage terms by the trade ban, according to the EU’s figures.

However, in absolute terms, Ireland is less affected, because it accounted for only 2.3% of EU food exports to the Russian Federation.

France has been the biggest EU food exporter to Russia. For the August to February period, French food exports to Russia fell 39%, from 460m in 2013-14 to 283m in 2014-15.

Imports from Latin America, Africa and Asia, and non-EU countries in Europe such as Serbia, are helping to fill the gap left by the EU in Russia.

The ban on more than €8 billion per year of food imports from the EU, the United States and some other countries, is due to run out on August 7, a year after it was imposed.

But there is no good news of a diplomatic solution to the dispute, according to ICOS, which says it is pushing the EU Commission to be more proactive, because dairy in particular is suffering, in a geo-political game that has nothing to do with the dairy industry.

Instead, the EU may extend sanctions against Russia which originally triggered the ban, because Brussels says Moscow is not doing enough to help implement a fragile peace deal for eastern Ukraine agreed in February in Minsk.

Relations remain very frosty, not helped by the Russians attempting to go around EU negotiators by discussing bilaterally with Greece, Hungary and Cyprus in an attempt to break the EU trading bloc’s solidarity. The Commission have stated that they would not accept this.

The EU’s diplomatic relations with Russia at present are limited to an exchange of letters.

The Russian ban has particularly affected exports of dairy and fruit and vegetables. It is the main factor behind falling EU dairy exports, with the cheese trade down 17%, butter down 5%, and powders down 5%.

The European Commission has noted that the collapse of the rouble over the past year would have meant that Russian buying powder of EU dairy product would have been severely constrained anyway.