The agri-food import sanctions against EU countries, which were recently announced by the Russian Government, will obviously impact on the European food and drink processing industry.
Russia remains the EU’s second most important food export market after the USA. In 2012, the value of food and drinks exported from the EU to Russia was close to €9 billion, points out FoodDrinkEurope, the trade body representing Europe’s food and drink industry. Indeed, Russia is the top export market for some EU Member States.
Europe’s food and drink industry also has a large trade surplus with Russia – the imports of foodstuffs from Russia to the EU amounted to € 1.3 billion in 2012.
EU food and drink products make up almost half of the total Russian food and drink imports, which means that this ban will also have an impact on the Russian people.
The structure of EU exports to Russia is quite diversified, with meat, dairy and beverages appearing as the most important categories; a large part of the EU food and drink exports to Russia come from Germany, the Netherlands, France and Poland, which means these countries are likely to be more affected.
Now that the final list of products to be banned has been published, FoodDrinkEurope can start assessing the impact country by country and product by product.
