Chinese shoes are threatening to block EU plans to impose trade sanctions on Belarus, with EU officials saying Italy is using Belarus in an unrelated antidumping dispute in a classic piece of EU political horse-trading.
Rome on 26 September surprised Brussels by abstaining from a vote on the Belarus sanctions, thus clearing the way for Poland, Lithuania and Latvia to block proposals to expel Minsk from the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) on trade.
But while the trio oppose...
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.