RUSSIA AND EU CLASH OVER TEXTILE QUOTAS.

Russia and the European Union have decided to hold trade talks in the next few days following Moscow’s threat to introduce quotas on textiles from the EU if that body does not raise its own annual quota on imports of Russian textiles. Russian Minister of Foreign Economic Relations Oleg Davydov said February 19 that the current EU quota of $150 million annually is insufficient and that Russia intended to take countermeasures next week. According to Davydov, the European Union exports some $750 million in textiles to Russia annually. But an EU trade source said that a compromise offer tabled during talks last December had failed because of Moscow’s all-or-nothing attitude and that talks were likely to fail again for the same reason. (5) An interim EU-Russian trade agreement entered into force February 1 that, it was believed, would provide a mechanism for resolving such disputes expeditiously.

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