Asked about the EU's unwillingness to increase quotas on Russian grain exports and its significance for Russia, Zlochevsky spoke about ensuing economic and strategic losses.
"We are losing this market in Europe, which means that we shall have to go to Asia. But Ukraine and Kazakhstan will come there too and all the three will have to vie on this small battlefield by dumping the prices," said Zlochevsky.
"Being able to export four million tons of grain to the European Union, we are entitled to a quota that is four times smaller. If Russia is to share this logic, it has in response to cut the European quotas for meat imports to Russia," he said.
The Russian Grain Union has sent a letter to Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov with the request to authorise corresponding ministries to seek from the European Commission a substantially increased annual quota for Russian exports or to introduce restrictions on the European Union's imports of grain and its processed products, above all flour, rice, spaghetti, bread as well as meat and agrarian technology with similar machines manufactured in Russia.
The European Commission has set the Russian quota of wheat deliveries to Europea in 2004 at one million tons. But the Grain Union considers that the minimal export figure for food wheat can be 1.2 million tons, and for fodder wheat two million tons. Besides, Russia can supply the European Union with one million tons of fodder barley.
