News

On 14 March, an extended session of the Working Group on the EU’s External Economic Relations dedicated to the discussion on current issues of Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) was held at the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Representatives from the Lithuanian state institutions and business organizations, enterprises and an officer of the European Commission’s (EC) Directorate-General for Trade Rūta Žarnauskaitė attended the session.

When opening the session, Director of the External Economic Relations Department of the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Albinas Zananavičius thanked the EC for its efforts to solve problems that were important to Lithuania in Russia’s WTO accession process and noted that Russia’s WTO accession was among Lithuania’s external trade priorities.

The EC representative acquainted participants of the session with details of Russia’s WTO accession WTO process and replied to the questions of businessmen and public servants. The participants took interest in ways to solve the issues of double prices for gas, the application of sanitary and phytosanitary measures, meat import quota and agricultural subsidies, export rates, customs clearance procedures and transit.

The participants discussed the possible impact of the establishment of the customs union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan on the fulfilment of Russia’s WTO commitments.

The participants of the meeting also asked questions about the political aspects of Russia’s WTO accession, taking into consideration Russia’s conflict with Georgia.

Russia declares an ambition to complete the WTO accession negotiations already this year and to join the WTO in early 2012.

According to the EC representative, technical problems of Russia’s accession could be solved in six months. Whether Russia will become a WTO member before the end of 2011 will depend on many factors, first of all, on the political will of the interested sides to find solutions to sensitive issues that remain unresolved.

Since the summer of 2010, Russia’s WTO accession process, with the political backing from the U.S.A. and the EU, has been particularly intensive. In order to become a WTO member, Russia has to complete multilateral negotiations on the conformity of the national legislation with WTO requirements and to ensure their implementation.

In November 2010, the EU and Russia succeeded to reach an agreement on two key issues: Russia’s commitments to unify its export rates and railway tariffs. Lithuania has always raised these issues as the key conditions for Russia’s WTO accession. The multilateral negotiations are going on and Lithuania aims that Russia would take up the commitments, particularly improving terms of trade, also in other spheres.