Strasbourg, 25/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - With final settlement of the issue of Russian export duty on rough timber, the EU and Russia concluded their bilateral WTO accession negotiations. A similar agreement having been reached with the United States, the largest economy still outside the WTO could join the organisation that governs world trade in 2011.
Following a meeting which brought European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, High Representative Catherine Ashton and Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht around the table with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and Economic Development and Trade Minister Elvira Nabiullina on Wednesday 24 November, the EU and Russia reached agreement on access to the goods and services market, a key issue for Russia's accession to the WTO. “The understanding reached complements the results of the bilateral negotiations concluded in 2004 with regard to important aspects of Russia's export duty regime and railway fees. The negotiations resulted in a balanced outcome on all the issues concerned by these bilateral talks, in a spirit of taking into account mutual interests,” the parties say in a joint press release published by the Commission. “Both sides are confident that this agreement will greatly facilitate the overall process of accession of Russia to the WTO,” they go on, indicating, however, that they are “aware of the remaining multilateral issues to be resolved in such areas as agricultural trade, technical regulations, including sanitary and phyto-sanitary rules, and the investment regime in the automotive sector, in order to complete this process”. The EU and Russia “express their confidence”, however, on “swift” progress on this path. No date was specified on Wednesday, but EU, US and Russian leaders hope that accession will take place in 2011.
Following tortuous negotiations begun in 1993, the accession of Russia to the WTO was thrown into doubt in August 2008 with the conflict with Georgia. The process moved much more quickly over the last few months because of the relaunch of relations between Moscow and Washington. (E.H./transl.rt)