Russia rejects EU food for another year
After the EU recently announced a six months sanction on trading with Russia’s financial, energy and defence sectors, the country’s leaders in Moscow were expected to extend by the same period the EU agri-food ban which was due to end in early August.
Instead, the EU sanctions, designed to push Russia to comply with terms of a ceasefire agreement with Ukraine, triggered a surprisingly strong reaction in Moscow.
Until August 2016, Russian authorities will turn back dairy products, fruit and vegetables and meat from the EU.
The ban may be extended to some other agri-food products, with Russian Minister of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev saying they will ban any imports they can replace with domestic products.
For example, the hundreds of millions of euro worth of flowers exported to Russia may also be turned back — which would hit the Netherlands hardest.
Exporters of dairy products, meat and fruit and vegetables were worst affected when the ban was introduced in August 2014. Russia accounted for almost 25% of EU agri-food exports in 2013, and this has declined by more than 40%.
However, recent statistics from the European Commission revealed that overall EU agri-food exports were 5% higher in value than the corresponding period in 2013/2014.
EU agri-food exports to Russia over the period decreased 42%, from €8.6 billion to €5bn.
In April 2015, EU agrifood exports to third countries were 10% higher than in April 2014. According to EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Phil Hogan, the exports improvement is partly due to the weakening of the euro against other currencies, but it is also due to more aggressive promotion and marketing of the EU in third countries, particularly China and the US.
“China is now the second export destination for EU products, and we were up by 26% there, and 64% in the month of April, 2015, compared with the same month the previous year.”
“We have also reopened live cattle exports to Turkey, which is producing some of the additional competition in the beef trade. Our agrifood exports to Turkey went up by 45% in the month of April 2015.”
EU food exports from August 2014 to April 2015 increased 15% to the US, 26% to Hong Kong, 27% to Turkey, and 31% to South Korea.
