BRUSSELS (Reuters) — The unequal relationship between the European Union and Russia has soured fast as a welter of disputes, many involving new EU members once in Moscow’s orbit, drowns out talk of a strategic partnership.When President Vladimir Putin and EU presidency holder German Chancellor Angela Merkel hold the next six-monthly summit in the southern Russian city of Samara on Friday, the mood will be “grumpy”, in the words of a senior EU official.

They will be unable to launch delayed negotiations on a new far-reaching cooperation agreement spanning energy, trade, human rights and foreign policy because Poland is blocking talks in protest at a Russian embargo on Polish meat imports.

“This will be a holding summit,” an aide to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said. In the seven months since Putin shared a cordial dinner with the 27 EU leaders in Finland, tensions have piled up over the future of Kosovo, the Polish meat dispute, Russia’s interruption of oil supplies to a Lithuanian refinery, Estonia’s moving of a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn and US plans to build a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said last month that EU-Russia ties had reached “a level of misunderstanding or even mistrust not seen since the end of the Cold War”.

Putin said on Tuesday he saw ‘no conflict of interests’ between the EU and Russia; only differences of opinion. But the reality is that in Moscow’s eyes, the Union’s 2004 eastward enlargement into ex-communist central Europe has made it a more difficult partner whose agenda is set partly by countries with a historic grudge against Russia.

Barroso’s vision of a win-win deal in which Moscow would open its oil and gas sector to foreign investment and third-party suppliers in return for security of demand and a share in Europe’s downstream energy industry has evaporated.

“It’s an unequal relationship. Russia sees no need to open its energy market because it is in a position of power and can pick off individual European countries with bilateral deals,” an EU diplomat said. Putin has said a public “Nyet” to breaking up Gazprom’s lucrative gas monopoly and the Russian state has tightened its grip on oil and gas companies and transit routes.

On top of a major project to pipe gas under the Baltic directly to Germany, bypassing pesky Baltic republics and Poland, Moscow has concluded bilateral energy deals in recent months with Greece, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria.

Commission officials fear such arrangements undermine their attempts to forge a common European energy policy and to speak with a single voice with the EU’s biggest supplier.

Some EU diplomats suspect the Kremlin has been stringing out the Polish meat dispute precisely to avoid entering talks with the EU on opening the Russian energy market.

The European Commission has gone to great lengths to provide Russian veterinary services with assurances that meat and other food products from Poland meet EU standards and are safe, but Moscow has refused to set a date for lifting the embargo. Now even issues that Brussels thought had been laid to rest, such as an agreement to phase out charges on European airlines overflying Siberia, are being reopened by Moscow.

Russian EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov told Reuters the deal clinched last November may require further negotiation because several Russian ministries were seeking further clarification on commercial and technical issues.

European officials acknowledge the EU does not have many cards to play in its relations with Moscow. One of the few is approval of Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organisation.

It is hard for the EU to simultaneously play the WTO card on trade issues, Siberian overflights, and to avert a Russian UN Security Council veto of an independence status for Kosovo.

“We have no leverage,” one senior EU official said. Another diplomat said the European Commission had been asked to draft a list of ways in which the EU could apply pressure on Russia but had come up with none.

The Europeans will push Putin at the summit for progress on problems that are preventing Brussels giving its final green light at the WTO, notably in protecting foreign investments.

Some new central European member states fear the interests of oil majors Shell and BP will weigh more heavily in the EU’s balance than their difficulties with their giant neighbour.