Russia Reminds E.U. About The Importance Of Recognizing Market Status Of Russian Economy

At the session of the 5th Committee of Russia-EU Cooperation, which closed in Brussels on November 30, the Russian delegation once again reminded its European partners about the importance of recognizing the market status of Russian economy by the European Union, announced Russia's deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade Maxim Medvedkov after the session. A while ago, the EU introduced special rules for Russia, which said Russian enterprises could achieve market status individually. "Such rules won't do for Russian industry," said the deputy minister, who thinks the Russian market "is developed well enough," which makes the market status issue "not legal or economic but political." The session, in the meantime, focused on various aspects of trade and economic relations and cooperation in the energy sphere, which the sides stated was successful enough. Apart from that, the sides pointed out the substantial progress they made in the effort to combat terrorism, infringements in the tax sphere and violations of intellectual property rights, and highly estimated the prospects of scientific and technological cooperation between Russia and the EU, including that in the field of joint space projects. The sides hope that problems that still remain will be successfully solved during the upcoming visit of European commissioners - Christopher Patten, the Commissioner for External Links, and Pascal Lamy, the Commissioner for Trade - to Moscow, which is due on December 4-6, 2001.