OREANDA-NEWS. September 26, 2013. The Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) organized a Round Table in Brest to discuss the main aspects of EEC efforts to form a unified competition policy within the Common Economic Space (CES); the issues of providing equal competition conditions on the markets in the three CES countries in various sectors of the economy; and the work of analyzing the state of competition on cross-border markets.

Attendees included a representative of the President of the Republic of Belarus in the Brest region, representatives of Belarus Council of Ministers, the National Assembly, regional executive committees, Belarus government agencies, concerns, universities, non-governmental organizations and business associations, companies, national antimonopoly bodies of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, as well as EEC Court and the embassies of Kazakhstan and Russia in the Republic of Belarus.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) was represented by Deputy Head of the Department for Control over Chemical Industry and Agro-Industrial Complex, Irina Epifanova. In her presentation on the “Issues of Providing Competitive Conditions on the Markets in the Context of Establishing CES” she discussed experience of joint work of competition authorities of the CIS countries on investigating antimonopoly violations on particular markets. Special attention was given to developing competition on the markets of agricultural and food products and FAS objectives under the framework of establishing the common market of agricultural and food products of the CES countries, such as expanding cooperation in investigating cross-border antimonopoly violations, strengthening control over actions of the authorities for allocating subsidies to support agriculture, taking into account the provisions of the Agreement on Unified Rules of State Support of Agriculture when exercising control over state and municipal preferences, and providing non-discriminatory access to the infrastructure facilities of the agricultural and food products market.

Participants were especially interested in the issues of eliminating excessive administrative barriers for movement of agricultural and food products within CES.

“Food products and agricultural raw materials take significant place in the structure of trade between the CES states and their share is continuously increasing. Therefore, the efforts towards unifying and harmonizing the law on technical regulation, as well as sanitary, veterinary and phyto-sanitary measures will facilitate creating equal conditions for competition on the markets of agro-industrial complex in the CES countries”, pointed out Irina Epifanova.