Customs Union Committee Met in Moscow

On March 2nd, 2011 Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Sergey Rumas took part in the meeting of the Customs Union Committee that was held in Moscow.

On March 2^nd, 2011 Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Sergey Rumas took part in the meeting of the Customs Union Committee that was held in Moscow.

During the meeting the Customs Union Committee approved the draft agenda of the summit meeting among the Customs Union member-countries scheduled for March 15^th in Minsk.

It is expected that during this meeting the Prime Ministers of the three countries (Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan) will discuss the issues related to the formation of the Common Economic Space, transfer of vehicle control from Belarusian-Russian border to the outer boundary of the Customs Union, organization of transfer of customs supervision from the Russian-Kazakh border to the outer boundary of the Customs Union, improvement of supranational authorities’ work, including arrangement of the Customs Union Committee activity.

In addition, the Heads of Governments are to consider the questions relative to formation and arrangement of EurAsEC Court activity, approaches to unified migration and visa policy in relation to third countries, accession of the Customs Union member states to the WTO, as well as approaches to the codification of Customs Union and Common Economic Space legislations, including proposals to implement the Declaration on Formation of the Common Economic Space of the three countries as of December 9^th , 2010.

During the meeting the Customs Union Committee considered a number of draft international agreements: agreements on vehicle control at the external boundary of the Customs Union, agreements on application peculiarities of the Customs Convention on the International Freight within the customs territory of the Customs Union, Protocol on Introduction of Amendments and Additions to the agreement on application of special protective, antidumping and countervailing measures with respect to third countries as of January 25^th, 2008.

The meeting heard the report on progress in implementing the Plan of Actions aimed at formation of the Common Economic Space. The participants also discussed the issues of customs and tariff as well as non-tariff regulations and made a decision to adjust the rates of import customs duties of the Uniform Customs Tariff within the Customs Union as to the following goods: ferrous metal chains, certain types of vegetables and some other foodstuffs.

Moreover, members of the Committee took decisions on the commodity nomenclature of foreign economic activity with respect to the classification of certain goods, as well as on a number of customs regulation issues. In addition, they approved draft Strategy of Developing a Uniform System of Technical Regulation, application of sanitary, veterinary and phytosanitary measures within the Customs Union for the years 2011-2015, as well as the ways to introduce amendments and additions to certain normative legal acts of the Customs Union Committee concerning application of sanitary and veterinary measures .

According to BelTA