Viktor Nazarenko, Minister in charge of Technical Regulation of the Eurasian Economic Commission, informed on developing a mechanism for admitting products to the market through the prism of technical regulation in the Eurasian Economic Union at the session “Technical regulation as a key factor of cooperation between the EAEU and the BRICS and SCO countries” and the fifth meeting of the Industrial Policy Council of the EAEU countries held on the sidelines of the INNOPROM International Exhibition on July 10-11, 2023 in Yekaterinburg.
The mechanisms of the technical regulation system are aimed at efficient solution of the tasks on removing technical barriers to trade and achieving the required level of competitiveness of the Union products from all sectors both in mutual trade and in exports to third countries.
According to Viktor Nazarenko, the Union has formed the unified system of technical regulation. Nowadays, 52 technical regulations have been adopted, 47 of which have already come into effect. The relevant base of standards has been created for the adopted technical regulations - the lists of interrelated standards contain more than 15 thousand items, including more than 10 thousand GOSTs. However, they require updating on a periodic basis.
"In order to maintain high level requirements of technical regulations and lists of standards, the Union now introduces the assessment of scientific and technical level of technical regulations and lists of standards used with them. No doubt, this will make it possible to revise the existing and develop new interstate standards on a systemic level," the EEC Minister stressed.
Viktor Nazarenko paid special attention to the importance of involving the Ministries of Industry and manufacturers from the Eurasian countries in creating the EAEU regulatory legal framework.
“Efficient implementation of any cooperative project is impossible without developing up-to-date interstate standards that meet international requirements. Standardization creates a basis enabling to work out breakthrough technical solutions and manufacture high-quality competitive products," the EEC Minister emphasized.
As a topical issue, Viktor Nazarenko touched on the issues of protecting the EAEU internal market through the tools for assessing the conformity of products to the EAEU technical regulation requirements and state control (supervision) over their compliance.
“At present, more than 520 thousand serial certificates of conformity and 3.5 mln declarations of conformity to the EAEU technical regulation requirements have been obtained for foreign-made products. The validity of issuing a significant part of these documents requires audit, including within the framework of state control (supervision). This will enable not only to protect consumers from unsafe products, but also to create equal competitive conditions for the domestic industry," Viktor Nazarenko said.
As for developing interaction between the EAEU and third countries, in particular with the SCO and BRICS countries, to remove technical barriers to trade, Viktor Nazarenko stressed that this should be facilitated primarily by mutual intentions of the parties to ensure harmonized approaches to establishing mandatory requirements and market access procedures based on international standards. And in the future - to ensure possible conclusion with the countries of these associations of separate agreements on removing technical barriers on the basis of the Agreement on the procedure and conditions for removing technical barriers in mutual trade with third countries enacted on April 15, 2023.
The EEC Minister also shared the main aspects of the concept being developed within the Union to create the Eurasian Product Quality Assurance System. He reported on the work to implement the digital project in the field of technical regulation and presented his vision of further prospects for digitalizing this area.