The European Union filed a complaint to the World Trade Organization (WTO), demanding € 290 billion from Russia in connection with the management of import substitution policy. This is stated in the message on the WTO website.
“In 2019, the cost of published tenders of Russian state-owned enterprises amounted to 23.5 trillion rubles, or approximately € 290 billion, which is equivalent to about 20% of Russian GDP,” the organization quotes RBC.
“The International Trade Regulator agreed to consider a dispute, which is expected to become one of the largest prices in the WTO,” Izvestia write.
The RBC website reminds that on December 22, the US sales representative Catherine said Russia in violating the WTO standards on import substitution. According to her, Russia practices preferences for goods and services of its own production, implements the import substitution program in the IT sector, and also maintains restrictions on imports that are not related to science in the agricultural sector. This puts American entrepreneurs to an economically unfavorable position and deprives fair competition, said Tha.
Responding to this statement Thai, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharov said that “if someone has violated the WTO rules, then this is the US and the European Union with its one-sided sanctions.” She stressed that Russia was forced to introduce import substitution because of the restrictions that the European Union accepted “under the press of the United States.”