Is the vegetable war over?

The great vegetable war of 2011 between Russia and the European Union may be winding down. Reuters reports: Russia and the European Union signed a deal agreeing conditions for the resumption of EU fresh vegetable imports to Russia, which banned them because of a deadly E.coli outbreak, both sides said on Wednesday. The deal followed ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

The great vegetable war of 2011 between Russia and the European Union may be winding down. Reuters reports:

The great vegetable war of 2011 between Russia and the European Union may be winding down. Reuters reports:

Russia and the European Union signed a deal agreeing conditions for the resumption of EU fresh vegetable imports to Russia, which banned them because of a deadly E.coli outbreak, both sides said on Wednesday.

The deal followed bitter recriminations over a halt on trade that earned EU producers some 600 million euros ($860 million) last year, with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warning of "poison" and the EU saying the blanket ban was unjustified.

The seeming resolution of the dispute comes none too quickly. The spat arose just as Russia raced to finish the last details of its long-awaited World Trade Organization accession. European officials left little doubt that the ban complicated Russia’s accession. Even if this deal sticks, the affair may have left an unhelpful residue of mistrust as that process enters the home stretch. 

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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