Russian trade ban is hard to swallow

Lithuania’s presidency of the Council of Ministers just got complicated.

Lithuania’s six months in the European Union spotlight, as holder of the presidency of the Council of Ministers, has become a little hotter of late, with Russia creating a trade dispute that has variously been blamed on plans for next month’s Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius and on a Lithuanian case against Gazprom.

The Russian authorities last week banned certain Lithuanian dairy products and imposed protracted inspections of Lithuanian trucks at border entry-points.

The European Union’s response has so far been restrained because it does not want to inflame the dispute further, but the European Commission’s department for health and consumer policy has become involved. The head of the EU’s delegation in Moscow has also protested to the head of the Russian customs service that the intrusive inspections of Lithuanian trucks are discriminatory.

As luck or design would have it, the head of the EU’s delegation in Moscow is a Lithuanian. Vygaudas Ušackas, a former foreign minister, took up the post in September, having spent three years as the EU’s special envoy to Afghanistan. Disputes about Lithuanian milk products and trucks are only the beginning. Difficulties over visa restrictions (on both sides) are expected to increase in the run up to the Sochi Winter Olympics in February.

Ušackas has personal experience of such matters. He is the son of Lithuanians who were deported for five years to Siberia by the Soviet authorities. In 2006, Russia denied him a visa to visit Lithuanian graves in Siberia.