EU agricultural trade relations with Eastern neighbours: current state and future perspectives in a changing policy framework

In the framework of its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), the EU is aiming to strengthen its political and economic relations with former Soviet Union republics. A key instrument to achieve this objective is to negotiate Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements (DCFTA). A DCFTA concerns not only the liberalisation of trade in all areas, but also the harmonisation of trade-related legislation with EU standards and acquis communautaire. To date, the EU has signed DCFTA’s with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Yet, the current political tensions centering on the Ukrainian crisis may disrupt the intended East-West integration significantly. Increasing strains between the EU and Russia in the summer of 2014 culminated in reciprocal trade sanctions, by which a range of EU food products is still banned from the Russian market. This session discusses the impacts of both short-term and long-term developments in the bilateral agro-food trade and markets. As an introduction to the topic, this paper sketches EU’s current state of agro-food trade relations and the evolutions in the trade policy context with its Eastern neighbours.