By Daisy Ayliffe - 20th November 2006
EU health commissioner Markos Kyprianou has pressed Russia to lift its ban on Polish meat products in a bid to salvage stalled talks between the EU and Moscow.
In a press conference on Monday evening, the commissioner told reporters the Russian ban on Polish food stuffs was “unjustified.”
“The Poles have demonstrated the political will required to solve this problem. The ball is now in the Russian court,” the Cypriot said.
“This is not a bilateral problem, it affects the whole of the EU. We have strict food safety mechanisms and we expect third countries to respect the verdicts of our food safety missions,” he added.
An EU fact-finding mission on food safety in Poland is expected to report on Thursday.
Polish deputy prime minister and agriculture minister Andrzej Lepper said he expected the EU inspection to show that all health and safety demands have been met.
“There are no facts to justify the actions by Russia,” he told reporters.
Poland has retaliated by blocking talks between the EU and Russia on a new economic and energy agreement due to begin on Friday.
Warsaw says it will only back the new pact if Moscow first lifts its ban.
As current holder of the EU's rotating presidency, Finland has been negotiating with Poland in an attempt to break the deadlock.
On Friday, Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen met his Polish counterpart Jaroslaw Kaczynski for talks on the mandate for the EU-Russia summit.
On Monday, Vanhanen suggested there was still a hope that Russia would lift its ban ahead of the crucial meeting on Friday.
“Russia is now saying that the ban will be lifted as soon as the outstanding technical issues have been resolved. This position makes the issue a technical one, an issue that can be resolved by pragmatic means,” he told members of parliamentary EU affairs committees in Helsinki.
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