SATURDAY: EU-Russia Summit agrees on Siberia overflights, but not on bigger issues

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The European Union and Russia reached agreement on Friday on terms for flights over Siberia at the Russia-EU Summit in Helsinki.
      However, the summit did not agree on starting negotiations on a new cooperation pact. The discussions were vetoed by Poland, which is locked in a trade dispute with Russia.
      This year European airlines are paying EUR 330 million for Siberian overflight rights on routes to Asia. A dispute on the matter has been brewing for more than 20 years. Under the agreement, Russia will drop the fees by 2014.
      The Finnish airline Finnair expects to save more than EUR 20 million thanks to the agreement.
     
In spite of efforts by other EU member states to persuade Poland to relent, Poland has held on to its view that Russia must cancel its ban on imports of Polish meat before it lifts its veto on cooperation talks with Russia.
      Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the dispute will not have a negative effect on relations between the EU and Russia.
      Poland sees the meat import ban as purely political. Putin and Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen nevertheless emphasised repeatedly that the issue is a technical one. Russia says that part of the problem is meat that is imported from China, and which has been sold in Russia as Polish. The EU does not allow Chinese meat imports.
      Vanhanen said that Finland will try to resolve the dispute during the remaining weeks of its EU presidency. European Commission President José Manuel Barroso appealed to Putin for an end to the import ban, which he sees as baseless.
      "Because everyone - including Putin - believes that Polish meat is good, we can perhaps eat Polish steak at the next meeting", Barroso proposed.
      Before the summit, Russian officials threatened to impose a meat import ban on the entire EU once Romania and Bulgaria join the Union at the beginning of next year. Russia has feared that inferior meat from the two countries might be sold to Russia. However, Putin did not take up the matter during the summit.
     
The summit brought good news for Finland: the Commission gave its support to the implementation of an electronic customs system in Finland and Russia. On Thursday Tapani Erling, Director General of Finnish Customs, said that the EU was partly to blame for the long backlogs of trucks at the Russian border, saying that the EU has slowed the implementation of an electronic system.
      "We plan to ease customs formalities between the EU and Russia in all ways possible", Barroso promised.
      Vanhanen said that he expects the EU pilot project to move forward in the coming weeks.
      The Finnish pet project - the European Northern Dimension - took a step forward during the summit, when it was joined by Russia, Iceland, and Norway. The aim of the Northern Dimension is to promote cooperation in economic, environmental, social, and security matters.

More on this subject:
 EU-Russia summit overshadowed by Polish-Russian meat dispute

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Head of Finnish Customs says EU partly to blame for truck queues at Russian border (23.11.2006)

Helsingin Sanomat