Brussels, 22/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 22 July, the dispute settlement body of the WTO decided to set up two special panels to rule on two disputes between the EU and Russia: firstly, the EU's complaint against the Russian embargo on European exports of pork (DS 475) and, secondly, Russia's complaint against the European “energy tax” (DS 474).
The EU brought the former case (DS 475) before the WTO in April, to challenge the embargo imposed in January of this year by Moscow on imports of European pork and pork meat, due to swine fever affecting wild boar in Lithuania and Poland. The EU takes the view that the Russian restrictions do not comply with WTO rules, particularly with the agreement on the application of sanitary and phytosanitary measures and the GATT agreement of 1994. In this dossier, Moscow has never accepted the EU's offer of banning European pork only from the infected regions, under the principle of regionalisation. According to the Commission, this had meant losses to the pork sector of the EU €580 million by the end of June.
In the second case (DS 474), Russia went before the WTO in December 2013 to fight the “cost adjustment” methodologies used by the EU to calculate dumping margins in anti-dumping investigations and reviews on certain products imported from Russia. Russia argues that its industry has suffered injury in the region of hundreds of millions of dollars a year due to the “energy correctives” applied by the EU to a number of sectors, such as metallurgy and chemicals (particularly fertilisers). Russia is challenging 17 measures introduced between 1995 and 2012 which affect Russian exporters. (EH)