An Analysis of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures in the Customs Union among Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus

Abstract

The issue of regional unions, cooperation on trade, economic and customs unions has been causing a close attention lately, as the tendency for making the cooperation blocks is getting stronger. That is mainly caused by the necessity to withstand the competition among other economic unions.

After World War II ended in 1945, the international society and its members recognized the necessity to reconstruct and revitalize broken world's economy. The outcome of such recognition and efforts came out two years later: twenty-three countries signed General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was a multilateral agreement regulating international trade. Nowadays the Word Trade Organization (WTO) is the large union which sets the standards and rules for the world trade.

The Former USSR countries, on obtaining the independence, attempted to reform and build their economies switching from the planned to market economy. They also plan to join WTO later on after implementing the reforms. However, first of all they founded the Customs Union in 2010 with the goal of increasing the trade between the countries and assisting the neighbors in improving their economies. Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus are the key players of the Customs Union (CU). Several other countries, such as Ukraine, Moldova. Armenia and others are supporting the organization.

Each agreement, including WTO and CU, have agreements, standards, policies and procedures regulating cooperation and trade.

The analyses showed that both organizations use the technical barriers to trade (TBT) or non ? tariff barriers. Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures of WTO and CU were compared, leading to the conclusions that CUs agreement and measures require some changes and amendments to improve trade at the internal and external markets.