The sanctions could eventually cost the EU about 500 million European Currency Units (ECU) (about $600 million) in trade.

A written statement issued recently quoted European Commission Vice-President Sir Leon Brittan as saying that he regretted "very much" that the US had gone ahead with publishing the list of sanctions.

"The United States has regrettably chosen not to take a multilateral path but rather to embark on unilateral trade sanctions.

These are specifically condemned by the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules," said Brittan. But the EU still hopes the US will respond to the union's desire to resolve the trade dispute "lawfully and amicably," he added.

The union would "not like to play the game of sanctions, but rather play the game according to its rules," a commission spokesman said in the statement.

He said that though the publication of a sanction list was illegal and arbitrary, the union would not put out a retaliatory list of its own and would still sort out the issue through the dispute settlement mechanism within the WTO. The EU submitted their complaint to the Geneva-based WTO against America's unilateralism on Dec. 21, according to the spokesman. (Xinhua News Agency)