EU and Russia are to resolve disagreement

EU and Russia are to resolve disagreement

According to reports, last week EU and Russia have resolved almost all conflicts deriving from EU's expansion next month. Both parties declared that they reached an agreement on cargo shipments from and to Kaliningrad, port and exclave of Russia, which has borders with Poland and Lithuania. Those two border countries are scheduled to access to the EU on May 1. On the other hand, European Commission stated that Russia will sign an amendment with the EU for extension of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement this week, which Russia deprecated previously. As previously reported by SteelOrbis, EU's expansion was worrying Russia due to its exports to certain Eastern European countries which are going to be EU members on May 1. Because Russia's exports will be included to the EU quota allocated to the country once these countries join EU, thus leading reduction in the exports of Russia. Favorably, this quota problem was settled recently as EU accepted Russia's demand and decided to increase current quota allocated to Russia by 437'000 tons, almost equal to exports of Russia to Eastern European countries. Currently, quota allocated to Russia is 1.38 million tons and Russia exports approximately 500'000 tons to Eastern European countries. Meanwhile, Russia is offered to join the WTO (World Trade Organization) as soon as possible and work out problems with all WTO members in order to protect its economy from such issues. Ongoing negotiations of Russia with WTO is expected to completed before end May.