Russia on the Mat at WTO – Loses Two Cases

Over the month of August, two separate WTO panels have ruled that Russian trade policies are in violation of global rules. One case involves a Russian import ban on pigs and related products from the EU, while the other addresses import duties on paper, refrigerators and palm oil.

Russia joined the WTO in August 2012, following a difficult negotiating process that spanned nearly two decades.

Meanwhile, diplomatic relations between Russia and many of these same partners, such as the EU and the US, have also deteriorated sharply over various issues, most particularly Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its handling of the Ukrainian crisis.

One of the panel rulings issued last month deals specifically with alleged Russian restrictions on imports of pigs, pork, and related goods from the European Union (DS475). Brussels filed the case after Russia imposed in early 2014 a sweeping ban on imported pigs and related products from the EU, along with issuing a few country-specific bans involving Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

Russia, for its part, had argued that the ban was needed given that there had been cases of African swine fever – an extremely contagious condition that can prove deadly to pigs – in wild boar found in Lithuania and Poland.

Among other findings, the panel ultimately deemed that the import ban is not in line with the international standards set by the World Organization for Animal Health, known as the OIE by its French acronym.

The panel also faulted Moscow for not customising the ban around the actual circumstances in the areas where the pigs or pig products were being imported from – particularly as the EU had proven that there were regions that were fully fever-free.

Duties on Paper, Refrigerators, Palm Oil Exceed Bound Rate: In a separate case, a WTO panel also ruled that a series of import duties on select agricultural and industrial goods (DS485) are also in violation of global trade rules. The affected goods include various types of paper and paperboard products, along with some palm oil products and household freezers.

The EU filed the case in late 2014, alleging that for a series of tariff lines Russia was exceeding its “bound” rates that it had negotiated when joining the WTO – in other words, the ceilings that it agreed to respect for those products.

The panel ruled that the bulk of the measures– 11 out of the 12 – were indeed above agreed limits, finding.