TALLINN - A report surfaced this week that the European Commission was poised to hit Estonia with an additional fine of up to 21 million euros for a series of food items that were illegally stockpiled on the eve of accession to the European Union in May 2004.
The Postimees daily reported July 5 that in addition to the 715 million kroons (46 million euros) the commission was set to penalize Estonia for excessive stocks of sugar, another 328 million were to be tagged on for an as yet unpublished list of goods.
Since the European Commission has not yet published the official list of goods, there was no official confirmation of the potential penalties involved, the paper wrote. Unconfirmed information, however, indicated that the fine would amount to 328 million kroons, some 60 percent of which was due to excessive stocks of butter. Other goods illegally amassed include skim milk powder and cheese, the paper reported.
The commission has also established that the Baltic state had excessive stocks of such goods as canned tangerines, grapefruit juice, hops, various meats, as well as spirits and wine.
The Estonian government has filed an excessive stock report only for butter and milk powder.
The presence of spirits and wine has reportedly puzzled Estonian officials and other countries, as they had not been included in the original excess stocks directive at all. But the way it looks, countries could be penalized for them.
Andres Oopkaup, vice chancellor of the Agriculture Ministry, was reluctant to comment on the report as no official papers had reached the ministry.
"But preliminary information appears to indicate it's ridiculously precise in some calculations, and with some goods the fines asked of new member states come to just a few euros," he said.
Despite the absence of a formal resolution, several new member states have already blasted the commission's decision, saying the report fails to consider changes in people's consumption habits.
Estonia, for instance, is likely to be fined for a small amount of excess rice, although the consumption of potato has been declining in recent years and has been supplanted by rice, Postimees wrote.
Oopkaup said that no matter what the commission's calculations are at this point, they are initial figures that are only beginning to be debated. A final decision could come at the beginning of 2006.
Although the state's efforts to contest the amount of excess sugar stocks failed and the quantity remained at 91,000 tons, Oopkaup is more hopeful in the present case. "I believe it's possible to talk over stocks because right now many things are really inexplicable," Oopkap said.
Last week it was reported that the government formally applied to Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, a Netherlands-based law office, for legal assistance in its battle against the European Commission's sugar penalty.
