Russia on Friday agreed to lift its import ban on EU vegetables imposed in the wake of the E. coli outbreak that provoked a bitter trade row between Moscow and Brussels. After two days of summit talks, EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso and Russian President Dmitry Mededev both said Moscow would lift the ban although it was unclear if this would happen in the next 48 hours.
"We are happy that we have agreed the ban on vegetables from the European Union will be lifted," Barroso said at a joint news conference with Medvedev in the central Volga city of Nizhny Novgorod. Without giving a specific time frame for the lifting of the ban, he said that the European Union would send certificates on vegetable safety to Russia within the next two days to get the procedure underway.
Medvedev confirmed Russia's willingness to lift the ban, saying sanitary experts from the two sides would have to shortly agree on subsequent moves. "We discussed a mechanism of resuming supplies of European vegetables to the Russian market," Medvedev said. In a change from earlier statements, Barroso said that a new system of certification of vegetable safety in the European Union would be "put in place without any delay." Russia last week imposed a blanket ban on vegetable imports to prevent the spread of the E. coli bacteria that has left at least 31 dead and some 3,000 sick.
Barroso confirmed almost 2 billion euros in funding for modernisation projects but said that Russia could not flourish without "the rule of law, protection of citizens' rights (and) a level playing field for business." Russia in turn repeated its calls for the European Union to scrap visas for its citizens.