Last November, EU newcomer Poland vetoed talks on a new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) between Moscow and Brussels to replace the current pact, which expires in late 2007, over the Russian ban on meat and other agricultural imports from Poland. Moscow cited health concerns, but Warsaw said the move was political.
"We hope to reach [the decision to start talks] during our next session [of the 27 states' foreign ministers in Brussels May 14]," Frank-Walter Steinmeier told journalists.
Steinmeier and the EU commissioner for external relations and European neighborhood policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, expressed regret over the EU health commissioner's failure to persuade Russia's agriculture minister at their meeting this weekend to lift the Polish meat import ban.
Russia imposed an embargo on Polish meat in November 2005 claiming that meat from third countries was being imported under the cover of Polish produce, which failed to meet health standards.
The issue of lifting the Russian embargo on Polish meat imports topped the agenda of the talks between EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou and Russian Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev that started in the Cypriot resort city of Limassol April 21. A source close to the negotiations confirmed to RIA Novosti April 22 that the talks yielded no results.
Relations between Russia and Poland, a former Communist Bloc country that joined the EU in May 2004, have deteriorated dramatically in the past few years.
A string of recent diplomatic spats has increased mutual distrust between the two neighbors, prompting many politicians in Warsaw to conclude that the Kremlin is using the embargo on Polish imports as a political weapon.
The European Commission has said there were no grounds for an embargo on Polish products, but has admitted that Poland made deviations from European regulations on meat exports.
