Italy's foreign minister Luigi Di Maio on Friday urged Russia to end its embargo on Parmesan cheese that followed European Union sanctions against the superpower over its illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea.
"Parmesan is a unique product of Italian excellence," Di Maio told reporters after talks on Friday in Rome with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
"I explained to Lavrov that we need to remove measures that were designed to target other European products and which in my view Parmesan is exempt from," Di Maio stated.
The Russian government has embargoed imports of most foodstuffs from Western countries since 2014 including European dairy products.
The counter-sanctions are supposed to hit agriculture in the offending nations while boosting domestic production.
