On 25–26 January 2010 a European Commission delegation led by Deputy Director General of the Directorate General for Trade, Péter Balázs, traveled to the Republic of Belarus on a working visit.

The visit included negotiations on a broad range of trade and economic issues between Belarus and the EU.

The European Commission was advised of new opportunities opening up to boost the exports of goods and services from the EU member states as the Customs Union of Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan has just emerged.

The parties assessed it positively that as the concept of the Customs Union was being shaped up in 2007 the governments of Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan selected the EU’s customs union as a fundamental model, which is yet the only efficient and solid customs union across the globe.

The negotiators made it known that any digressions from the model would bring a dramatic deformation to the Customs Union now under way and trigger distortions generating unequal conditions for the businesses of three countries. In this regard, the parties underscored the need to build up a customs union encompassing Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan in strict compliance with international standards and principles.

The negotiation brought more focus of the European Commission to the need that a Most Favorable Treatment regime should be reinstated by the European Union for the Republic of Belarus, legislative and institutional fundamentals created to bring in stronger economic relations between the EU and Belarus.

Currently, the EU keeps high import customs duties going for a number of key Belarusian exports (trucks, haulage tractors, cheese, cream, milk, butter, sugar, beef and others). Moreover, as the Republic of Belarus was withdrawn from the EU’s Generalized System of Preferences, the Belarusian exporters have sustained an extra economic loss (nearly $300 m, annually).

In view of this, Belarus urged the European Commission to lift current discriminatory restrictions in bilateral trade, including EU’s autonomous export quotas for several types of Belarus textiles and clothes.

Gratitude was extended to the experts of the European Commission’s Directorate General in charge of health care and consumer protection for the work carried out with Belarusian specialists in securing vet permissions for the Belarusian enterprises in the exports of dairy and meat products to the EU.

Special importance was given to the additional inspection mission of the EC’s experts to Belarus on 18–29 January 2010 due to assess the compliance of Belarusian milk produce with the European standards and forthcoming inspection missions of the EC in March-June 2010 to appraise the quality of Belarusian poultry farming.

The Belarusian party called upon the European Commission to work jointly to generate most transparent and open borders for businesses between the Customs Union and the EU to ensure fast movement of goods and encourage mutual trade. In this context Belarus’ interest was stressed to become involved in a pilot project involving a provisional exchange of SPEED customs information, that is in place now between the EU and Russia.

The negotiations saw an open and substantive talk with the EU, for the first time in the past few years, regarding the Belarus’ accession to the WTO. The Belarusian side welcomed the European Commission’s intention to enhance the negotiation and indicated its readiness to provide more details of the economic and trade policies of Belarus, including decisions adopted within the Customs Union of Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan.

The parties have also agreed that this exchange of information would be instrumental in the negotiations about the EU recognition of the Belarusian economy market status.

The Belarusian side positively regards the results of the working visit to Belarus of the senior officials of the EC’s Directorate General for Trade and deems it as another impetus to a more active dialogue between Belarus and the EU on the whole range of pressing bilateral issues of trade and economy.