Belarus may restrict imports of goods with Russian conformity certificates

As of February 2017, the Russian Federal Customs Service stopped accepting conformity certificates issued by Custom Union member states other than Russia at the Russian customs border. Such approach violates the principles of the EEU Treaty and its main goal is to ensure that the certification of all products coming to Russia is carried out only by Russian certification bodies and generates additional income for them. Due the new rules, Belarusian cargo transport companies are likely to reduce the volume of transit cargo shipments. There may be difficulties with certification of imported products supplied with Russian certificates. The terms for products certification may increase and there may be more cases when products with Russian certificates could be denied registration in Belarus. If the issue is not resolved in the near future, Belarus could introduce similar measures in response, which would lead to problems with supply of some goods and enhanced control over imports from Russia. In addition, Belarus could introduce administrative measures to perplex access of Russian products to the Belarusian market.