Italy Rejects Common Market’s Ban on Food From East Europe

Italy has rejected a European Economic Community agreement to ban fresh food imports from Eastern Europe, but the 11 other member countries have decided to go ahead with the ban, officials here said Sunday.

They said that although efforts are continuing to persuade Italy to agree, Rome’s partners have decided to go ahead with the ban, more than two weeks after the Soviet nuclear accident at Chernobyl sent a radioactive cloud across Europe.

Later, Western European sources said they are confident that Italy will accept the import ban at a meeting of community foreign ministers in Brussels today.

Italy, which required importers of fresh food from both within and outside the Common Market after the Chernobyl accident to present a certificate that the food was fit for human consumption, says it will not withdraw this requirement.

Italy’s partners charged that this procedure was a ploy meant to hold up their perishable products at Italian borders, a charge hotly denied by Rome.

The Common Market’s executive body last week banned imports of meat and live cattle and pigs, which account for more than 80% of the fresh food imports from Eastern Europe. It needed the approval of all 12 members to extend the ban to milk and other fresh foods.

Although Common Market officials were at pains to point out that the dispute had not prevented action from being taken, they admitted that it has shown the economic community to be unable to act quickly to allay public fears about contamination from the April 26 accident.

Common Market officials apparently had believed Saturday night that all 12 nations in the economic community had accepted the curbs on imports of fresh food, and it announced in Brussels that the ban would come into force quickly and stay in force until May 31.

But Italy protested Sunday that it had not accepted the agreement.