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“Achieving a balance of interests between the consumer and the entrepreneur in today’s difficult economic environment is one of the main goals of the joint work by the EAEU countries and the Commission to protect the consumer rights of the population,” Victor Nazarenko, Minister in charge of Technical Regulation of the Eurasian Economic Commission, stated at a meeting of the Advisory Council on Consumer Rights Protection.

The strategic areas for Developing the Eurasian Economic Integration until 2025 include a whole range of measures aimed to protect consumer rights. The document allowed the Union countries to timely join their efforts, making effective decisions on protecting the citizens' interests in modern environment. According to the meeting participants, the issues of increasing the population's legal literacy, ensuring the consumer rights to the quality and safety of goods and services in the context of parallel imports, the rapid development of electronic commerce, and settlement digitalization come into sharp focus.

It is these areas that will be decisive when implementing the Program of the EAEU Countries' Joint Actions to Protect Consumer Rights in 2023. “The Program aims to create conditions for developing the bona fide business, while reducing its administrative burdens, to protect the consumer rights of citizens by taking all necessary regulatory measures to ensure the proper quality and safety of goods,” the EEC Minister emphasized.

The meeting participants approved a list of minimum necessary priority measures aimed at consumer rights protection to be included in the structure of temporary economic measures for maintaining a balance of society and business' interests. A number of promising proposals have been put forward, including those intended to evaluate the effectiveness of the Commission's recommendations for assessing their impact on the consumer protection level in the Union countries and subsequent updating.

Plans have been outlined to study the issues of increasing the effectiveness of informing consumers about the food products' nutritional value. Next year it is planned to hold a number of meetings and conferences devoted to improving the consumer literacy of the population and business within the EAEU states with the involvement of public associations and science.

Particular attention is paid to the issues of developing further cooperation between the EAEU countries and observer states at the Union. According to Viktor Nazarenko, the plan of joint activities of the EEC and the Government of the Republic of Uzbekistan for 2021-2023 is being successfully implemented. Having discussed the possibilities for further interaction, the meeting participants supported the initiative of the Consumer Rights Protection Agency under the Antimonopoly Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan to hold a seminar on consumer protection issues by the end of this year with the involvement of interested authorized authorities of the Union countries.