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Poland signals end to veto on EU-Russia talks

04.04.2007 - 09:27 CET
By Andrew Rettman

The six-month long deadlock of Poland's veto on EU-Russia treaty talks appears to be moving to a resolution, with Warsaw yesterday saying it is ready to unblock the talks despite Russia's continuing tough line on Polish meat exports.

The Polish ambassador to the EU, Jan Tombinski, on Tuesday (3 April) at a regular meeting of EU ambassadors in Brussels said Poland is ready to lift its blockade, the biggest Polish daily, Gazeta Wyborcza reports, citing unnamed EU diplomats.

The report suggests that Mr Tombinski's offer is not linked to any special conditions. But it would not be the first time Polish officials have raised hopes of an imminent breakthrough before backtracking later.

"We hope an agreement on the Russian negotiations will be formally adopted at one of the next meetings of EU foreign ministers," a German diplomat told the Polish daily, with 19 April or 23 April suggested as dates for the formal Polish move.

The development bodes well for the EU being able to start negotiations on a new EU-Russia bilateral treaty at the 18 May EU-Russia summit in Samara.

Poland imposed its veto last November, saying a €400 million a year Russian ban on Polish meat and vegetable exports was political and that the EU had not shown solidarity with its new, ex-Communist member states.

Both the Finnish and German EU presidencies have since taken up the issue with Russia's president Vladimir Putin, while the European Commission has bent over backwards to provide safety guarantees on Polish food to Moscow.

Brussels' latest dossier on Polish food, submitted last Friday, failed to impress Russia, however. "An early reading of the materials...indicates they are inadequate," Russian food safety chief Sergei Dankvert said on Monday, calling for fresh inspections, Polish press agency PAP reports.

The reasons behind the Polish u-turn are unclear for now - Warsaw may feel it's made its point about EU solidarity, it may have secured agreement to get a legal clause on energy solidarity into the new EU treaty or it may simply hope that its friendly gesture will be reciprocated by Russia.

The whole problem has had an air of artificiality about it for the past few months in any case.

Polish food is finding its way into Russia via third countries and the €400 million a year loss figure cited by Warsaw is open to doubt. EU and Russian diplomats are still meeting regularly and talking about the same issues they will discuss once the "formal" EU-Russia treaty talks kick off.

Meanwhile, Lithuania has threatened to veto the EU-Russia talks unless Brussels gets Russia to play fair on an oil pipeline supplying its Mazeikiu petrol refinery. Russia shut down the pipe nine months ago in what Vilnius sees as another political ploy.

European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso ignored Lithuanian complaints for eight months before taking up the matter in March. His intervention has so far led Russia to say it will produce a report "quite soon" on how long "technical repairs" of the pipeline might take.

Poland signals end to veto on EU-Russia talks (http://euobserver.com/24/23838)