TALLINN - The head of the Estonian Plant Production Inspectorate has said that no early settlement could be expected concerning a Russian ban on the import of Estonian products with plant origin, as Moscow has now taken the subject to the European Union level.
"Russia has sent a big questionnaire on this to all the EU member states, and meetings are already taking place in Moscow on the EU level," the director of the Estonian inspectorate, Roland Nymann, told the Baltic News Service on Sept. 3. "The question is how the transit of goods from third countries to Russia via the European Union is being handled," he said.
Thus the Russian ban on the import of plant products from Estonia has become a wider issue concerning all trade between the EU and Russia, as well as matters of food control, said the Estonian official.
"Of course all of this is nine-tenths politics, it's about a wish to show us our place," Nymann said. "A violation by an Estonian company just served as incentive for them, yet in any event Russia has overreacted and has breached conventions."
The Russian Veterinary and Phytosanitary Control Service as of Aug. 13 banned import from Estonia of all goods subject to phytosanitary control after plant pests were allegedly found in a batch of South American and Israeli flowers shipped to Russia via the Baltic country.
