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On August 16, the headquarters of the Eurasian Economic Commission hosted a working meeting between Viktor Nazarenko, EEC Minister in charge of Technical Regulation, and Anton Shalaev, Head of the Federal Agency for Technical Regulation and Metrology (Rosstandart). During the meeting, the parties discussed the current status and development prospects for the unified system of technical regulation aimed at creating favorable conditions for enhancing competitiveness of economic sectors, eliminating technical barriers in trade within the Union, as well as international marketing of products by the Union's enterprises.

The key topic of discussion was systemic issues of developing the Union's standardization sphere and providing technical regulations with a full-fledged evidence base of modern interstate standards.

Today, standardization improvements are a special focus of the EEC and the Union countries, particularly in terms of ensuring free access to some departmental and private research (testing) methods included on the lists of standards to EAEU technical regulations. A considerable number of documents were adopted by authorized authorities of the Soviet Union.

"Based on the results of analysis done by the EEC, as of August 2023, out of 473 methods on the list of standards, only 162 documents (34%) are available; there is no access to 214 documents (45%); and as for 97 documents (21%), the authorized authorities of our countries did not provide any information regarding them. That is a significant obstacle to ensuring compliance with requirements of the Union's technical regulations," noted Viktor Nazarenko. "EEC together with the national standardization authorities of the Union countries take measures to elaborate a possible solution to that problem. It is also important to involve other departments of our countries that are legal successors of the relevant USSR ministries."

Viktor Nazarenko and Anton Shalaev noted that the Procedure for Coordinating Standardization Work in the EAEU recently approved by the EEC Council would facilitate system planning for ensuring application of the Union's technical regulations and application of progressive international and regional standards.

 The growing need for modern standards not only in technical regulation but in other areas, too, will soon require transition to a coordinated standardization policy.

 The meeting participants also discussed the matters of ensuring uniformity of measurements. Creation of full-fledged common energy markets, functioning of common markets for medical products and medicines, development of the social sphere and free trade, application of sanitary, veterinary and phytosanitary measures are all impossible without an effective mechanism for using valid measurement results. Taking into account the specific nature of the above-mentioned fields, provisions on ensuring uniformity of measurements merit separation into an annex to the Treaty on the EAEU specifying not only possibilities but also powers and tools that can be leveraged within the Union.

 meeting also touched upon the issues of improving the system for controlling accuracy and validity of measurement results in healthcare, as well as upon the advisability of developing an all-Union procedure for classifying medical devices having measurement functions as measurement instruments and making relevant amendments to the existing acts of the Union. The experience of metrological institutes and Rosstandart services in this field is highly useful.

The parties noted that in the current economic conditions a particular emphasis is placed on the issues of protecting the market from dangerous products through establishing thorough control over issuing conformity certificates and declarations for products and ensuring effective state control (supervision) over compliance with the Union's technical regulations. In particular, the EEC together with the authorized authorities of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus will initiate the Union's consideration of transitioning from declaring to certifying many types of self-propelled vehicles. Additionally, the proposal by the Russian Federation to transition from certification to approval of self-propelled vehicle types when it comes to tractors and agricultural machinery will be considered in the near future. That will significantly increase the accountability of certification authorities for issuing their authorizations.

The issues of removing technical barriers to trade with key partners of the Union Member States, primarily the participating countries of

the Commonwealth of Independent States, were also in the focus of discussion. When dealing with the CIS countries, application of unified interstate standards (GOST) acquires particular importance. According to the Head of Rosstandart, many trade partners from non-CIS countries carefully examine the standardization system of the Russian Federation and are ready to discuss their direct application of CIS-GOST interstate standards and GOST R Russian national standards.

 The meeting participants agreed the joint actions by authorized authorities in the sphere of technical regulation and the EEC to implement the project Digital Technical Regulation Within the EAEU. Moreover, in September this year, the Russian Institute of Standardization will host an extended meeting of the Scientific and Technical Council that will include reviewing the concept for digitalizing standardization and technical regulations in the Russian Federation and the EAEU.