EU, Russia Have Sugar Shakeup

With several Baltic and Balkan countries slowly being accepted into the EU, a development is occuring in sugar trade. Many of these countries, former soviet states, must discontinue purchases of sugar from Russia. They must now buy from EU partner countries. The catch? The sugar that will have to be purchased from EU partners will be almost double the price of the Russian sugar. This is not making the new EU partners very happy. But to guarantee their acceptance into the EU partnership--which will offer many advantages--these countries will have to make the sugar purchase concession. Others appear likely. How the reshuffled sugar purchases will affect relationships with the EU is a big unknown. Russia's ready trading partners will be pulled out of its marketing strategy.