France Backs Poland Demanding Russia Removes Ban on Polish Agriculture Products

rance is siding with Poland on complaints the European Commission has not done enough to help break Russia’s food trade ban, as Finnish PM Matti Vanhanen attempts to salvage next week’s EU-Russia summit. Independent internet publication EUobserver.com quoted an unnamed French diplomat as saying: “We have supported Poland on the issue of the [food trade] embargo. We repeated on Wednesday (Nov. 15) that it falls fully within the commission’s competence — it’s not a bilateral issue.”

“It’s not for Russia to decide what the European Commission’s competence is in our own interior architecture,” he added, with Poland saying Brussels “overslept” on the food trade question, passing it from department to department over the past year.

Last November Russia has imposed a blockade on Polish exports of meat and vegetables, with Poland now saying it will block next week’s EU-Russia negotiations on a new post-2007 treaty unless the EU gets tough on Russian trade and energy policy.

In April EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson privately promised the Polish ambassador in Brussels he would intervene, but washed his hands of the issue in June saying it was a “bilateral matter” and passing it back to colleagues in the commission’s health department.

“The Russians did not want the commission involved in the negotiations. We were proactive, we did our best, but the Russians just didn’t want us,” an official from Mandelson’s team said.

Another commission official added: “There is sympathy for Poland. It’s pretty clear that if a third country imposes a trade ban on an EU member state for political reasons — as in this case — then the commission has to act. But they didn’t want to upset the Russians.”
Source:mosnews.com