MOSCOW, December 23. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia has filed a lawsuit to the EU over energy adjustments, the head of the Ministry of Economic Development Trade’s negotiations department, Maksim Medvedkov, told Itar-Tass.
In the first stage a request for consultations was made Monday, and the consultations are to take place within 60 days, that is roughly by February 23, he said.
Medvedkov explained that if the sides failed to reach an agreement, Russia would have the right to move to the next stage of dispute settlement, namely to forming a board of arbiters to resolve the issue.
According to the official, Russia’s complaint is that in its anti-dumping procedures the EU estimates the Russian enterprises’ energy- and gas-related costs on the basis of European prices, which are considerably higher, and on the basis of such erroneous estimates it accuses Russia of dumping practices.
“We believe the EU violates the WTO anti-dumping agreement. This harms Russian exporters,” he said adding such an approach enabled the EU to automatically accuse Russia without a reason of dumping policies merely because the domestic prices of energy resources were lower.
As for Russia’s lawsuit against the restrictions introduced by the EU third energy package, Medvedkov said the suit was being drafted, but it would not be lodged this year. He explained Russia did not link these two lawsuits with each other.