MOSCOW, May 29 (RIA Novosti) – Russia is considering suing the European Union through the World Trade Organization (WTO) for giving Ukraine an edge on the EU market without a free trade agreement, Russian Deputy Minister of Economic Development Alexei Likhachev told RIA Novosti Thursday.
“The topic that we have declared is the trade preferences that the European Union has granted Ukraine,” Likhachev said.
He said the preferences “contradicted the basic principles of the preferential treatment regime, and the WTO basic principle of non-discrimination,” and were imposed without any existing free trade zone agreement.
He said that Russia had notified the European Union of possible legal action but no response had yet been received.
The European Commission earlier said it would temporarily remove customs duties on Ukrainian exports to the EU, following the recent economic crisis in the country.
In April, the EU endorsed a move to grant Kiev “autonomous trade preferences.” It applied tariff cuts starting from late April that are to remove about half a billion euros of EU customs tariffs a year, EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said last month in Brussels. He added they would be in place until November 1, 2014 at the latest.
The preferences cover 95 percent of current EU tariffs imports of industrial goods from Ukraine and all EU tariffs on Ukraine’s agricultural produce exports to the EU, De Gucht said.
