Tuesday, January 23, the Minister for Agriculture, Armands Krauze, in Brussels, at the meeting of the Council of EU Ministers for Agriculture and Fishery (Council) will present a justification of unfavorable impact on Latvia and the EU of Russia’s imports of food and agricultural goods. Thus, A.Krauze will persistently require a concrete action, introducing sanctions to ban Russia’s imports to the EU of food and agricultural goods. It is true that the decision on introduction of sanctions by EU must be made at the highest level – the level of heads of governments after a wider agreement among Member States and not on agreement of the Ministers for Agriculture.
“In 2014, Russia stopped imports of agricultural products from EU because EU strongly condemned annexation of the Crimea. This clearly demonstrated that Russia does not abstain from sanctioning food and agricultural goods because food for Russia is only a weapon. Why cannot we understand this and take adequate actions, banning imports of food and agricultural goods from Russia”? the Minister for Agriculture, Armands Krauze is perplexed.
On one hand – EU is working on measures, weakening Russia’s ability to continue war against Ukraine and to stop dependence of EU from Russia, on the other hand – parties are still importing various goods from Russia thus contributing to economy and war industry of this aggressor state. Therefore, the Minister for Agriculture, already at the Council meetings on October 3 and December 11, 2023, asked EU Member States to start discussion on the ban of Russia’s imports of food and agricultural goods to EU. In addition, on December 11, A. Krauze met European Commissioner for Agriculture, Janusz Wojciechowski, and asked the European Commission to start immediately working on the ban of Russia’s imports of grain and other foods. On Latvia’s initiative at the Council, Ministers for Agriculture of Lithuania and Estonia also expressed their unanimous position to start immediately discussions on the ban of Russia’s imports to EU.
At the Council meeting, Ministers of the Member States will also discuss the main objective of the Belgian presidency – EU food autonomy as well as sustainability improvement of food production and consumption. In the sector of agriculture and fisheries, Belgian presidency is working on development of a coordinated EU food policy, to facilitate phasing out dependency of EU on third countries.