Russia-EU trade down by 8% as result of cooperation rollback — Russian ForMin

MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/. Cooperation between Russia and the European Union has been frozen practically completely, with trade being down by eight percent in 2014, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in an annual performance report for 2014 published at the ministry's website.

"Cooperation with the European Union has been frozen in practically all key areas," the document says. "Unilateral sanctions and Russia’s retaliatory measures [bans on imports of a number of food products] have had an adverse impact on the trade-and-economic ties with the European Union: mutual trade dropped by almost eight percent in 2014."

However the ministry said active work had been conducted with "focus states" of the EU Eastern Partnership with an aim of defending Russia’s interests. "We continued to implement the existing projects within the Northern Dimension and Russia-EU border cooperation programmes," the report says.