Czech Republic sues EU over fine for extensive food supplies

The Czech Republic is filing a lawsuit against the European Union over a fine of CZK 350,000,000 (just over USD 17,000,000). The EU penalized the Czech Republic for having too large supplies of some foodstuffs before joining the Union in 2004. The European Commission holds that some of the new member countries, for speculative reasons, accumulated great supplies of food under lower customs duty than was valid within the European Union at the time. In the Czech Republic, this refers to excessive reserves of tangerines, pineapples, tinned mushrooms, rice and chicken.