Russia takes seriously fulfilment of WTO commitments — ministry official

Russia takes seriously the fulfilment of the country’s commitments within the World Trade Organization (WTO), and increasing US and EU criticism is politically motivated, director of the department of trade talks at the Ministry of Economic Development Maxim Medvedkov told ITAR-TASS in comments on Monday's meeting of the WTO general council.

At the meeting, representatives of the United States and the European Union, with support of delegations from Australia, Canada, Norway, Ukraine and Japan, stated that Russia did not fulfil its commitments within the trade organization which the country joined in August 2012.

“They present what they want as a real situation, and they probably want to see a big failure of Russia when it breaks its commitments. In fact, there is no failure, it is absolutely obvious, but, however, such atmosphere is being created,” Medvedkov said at the meeting. “We do not believe that we do not fulfil our commitments. We take them very seriously,” he noted.

Notably, participants in the meeting discussed what they called Moscow’s failure to fulfil commitments on import tariffs, sanitary and phytosanitary measures and criticized safeguard measures for light commercial vehicles and harvesters.

The ministry official does not find it accidental that criticism of Russia has intensified over a deteriorating crisis in Ukraine. “This issue began taking acute forms two months ago within other WTO bodies - the Council for Trade in Goods and the Market Access Committee, criticism on Russia started growing and certainly this is not a mere coincidence with the calendar of political events,” Medvedkov said.