Maxim Kim, Deputy Director of EEC Technical Regulation and Accreditation Department of the Eurasian Economic Commission, told about eliminating technical barriers to trade between the Eurasian Economic Union and third countries during the international forum "New Horizons for Accreditation in the Context of Modern Challenges" in Minsk.

In particular, he noted that the foundation for a substantive discussion of elimination of technical barriers was laid when the Treaty on the EAEU was still in preparation. In 2021, the Member States signed the Agreement on the procedure and conditions for eliminating technical barriers to mutual trade with third countries. It is based on the principle of equal obligations of the EAEU and a third country leading to the elimination of such barriers, while the implementation of practical arrangements envisages an international treaty between the EAEU and its five Member States with a third country.

The Agreement on international treaties of the Union with third countries, international organizations and international integration associations dated 2018 provides for assessing economic feasibility of concluding international treaties, specifically those on eliminating technical barriers to trade.

"The main difficulty is the need for assessing economic feasibility of concluding an international treaty, as it means defining a list of products to be covered by future agreements on elimination of technical barriers to trade with a certain third country," stressed Maxim Kim.

According to the Commission's representative, the subject of future discussions might be procedures for determining comparability of mandatory requirements of the EAEU and a third country, for appointing conformity assessment authorities taking part in mutual recognition of conformity assessment results, ensuring control over safety of products entering into circulation in the EAEU states based on recognizing the conformity assessment results obtained by foreign authorities.

Maxim Kim expressed hope that the joint work of experts from the Member States, third countries, the Commission, all interested authorities and business community representatives would help address those issues and would facilitate expanding trade and economic ties of the EAEU with third countries.

At the forum the EEC representative held a number of meetings with delegates from the Ministry of Industry, State Committee for Standardization of the Republic of Belarus and Belarusian State Institute for Standardization and Certification. They discussed interaction between the national operator of electronic logbook systems in Belarus and Electronic Logbook JSC, administrator of electronic logbook systems, as well as creating and maintaining a unified register of issued vehicle type approvals and vehicle design safety certificates.