Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov’s comment for Bloomberg News

Submitted on Thu, 10/05/2017 - 16:05

Question: Trade Secretary Liam Fox said that the European Union and the UK have reached an understanding on the methodology they will use to divide between them World Trade Organization quotas after Brexit. What is your comment on that?

Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov: Of course it is good news that the UK and the EU have come to an agreement on the methodology of so-called splitting of tariff quotas. Let us hope both sides will then easily come to terms on all remaining issues of Brexit, including their future bilateral trade relations. But one should keep in mind that the matter of tariff quotas is not a bilateral issue. It is a multilateral one, as long as tariff rate quotas are part of EU and its Member States’ obligations within the WTO.

At the end of the day it is now other WTO members’ turn to agree or disagree with the proposal. And certainly there are some other trade policy matters which the UK will have to reconcile within the WTO. As for the Russian Federation, we are of course interested in seeing that our economic operators are not discriminated under the new terms either in the UK or in the EU-27.