On October 16, 2013 in Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation in Moscow the International conference “Topical issues of foreign economic and investment activities, the turnover of the objects of intellectual property under the WTO and the Customs Union” was held, the conference was organized by Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation together with International partnership network of law firms Customs & Corporate Lawyers
In the opening speech Vice-President of Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation Vadim Chubarov noted that neither pessimistic nor optimistic forecasts on the consequences for the national economy of Russia’s accession to the WTO did not prove. According to the expert, there should be a greater concern about European Union canceling number of trade preferences for Russia from January 1, 2014, which will affect the decrease of Russian goods’ export potential, first of all, of high-scale processed goods of aluminum.
Indeed, on November 20, 2012 г. in European Union EU Regulation 978/2012 entered into force, where new scheme of tariffs preferences in the framework of GSP (Generalised System of Preferences) regime is stipulated. The List of countries on which lowered import duties applied was cut down from 176 to 80 countries, where Ukraine was excluded from the list together with Russia.
According to the Sergey Svistel, the Vice-President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Ukraine, this has became one of the reasons for Ukraine to conclude Association agreement with European Union, about which there are so many political speculations in Russia. «We are not talking about joining the EU, - commented Sergey Svistel, - now, we are talking about completely different way of work on the external market. In fact we are jumping in the last car of departing train, because similarly with Russia, from January 1, 2014 we loose preferences on the supply of goods to the EU. We must take this into consideration, especially due to recent decrease of volume of the trade with the Russian Federation: this year the decline might reach 28%».
Andrey Slepnyov Minister of Trade of the Eurasian Economic Commission noticed that the attempts of entrepreneurs to choose those kinds deliveries, where it is not needed to go through the customs, is one of the factors influencing the reduction in the volume of trade between Russia and Ukraine. He confirmed that there was change in the structure of Russia's trade, «Trade within the Customs Union have pulled over the vitality from the trade within the CIS». At the same time, the Minister said, the Customs Union has brought additional risks, including an increase of the «gray import» flow, which requires greater cooperation between customs services of three countries.
The situation in the sphere of customs administration was described in details by Dmitry Nekrasov, Director of Customs law and practice Department of the Eurasian Economic Commission. According to him, current work is being performed in three directions. The first direction is the codification of customs legislation, i.e. the implementation of numerous agreements in the body of the Customs Code of the Customs Union (CC CU).
The second direction is to deal with of the numerous references of the Customs Code of the Customs Union, which, by Dmitry Nekrasov’s figurative expression is similar to the many-headed mythological hydra: the more heads are off, the more grows back. And the third direction – particularly perfecting the customs legislation, under which the process of first set of amendments introduced in the Customs Code of the Customs Union is near completion. In EEC it was hoped that the protocol would have been signed in December and will come into force next year, but neither from Russia nor Kazakhstan the results of the state approval procedure have not yet been received. The text of the updated Customs Code of the Customs Union is available on the EEC website .
However, business should not expected any considerate innovations - the main part of the proposals of the business community was pushed out to the second stage of the reform the Code, which will begin in December (for greater efficiency of this process on October 9 at the EEC has created a working group under the leadership of Vladimir Goshin, Minister of the Customs Cooperation). So that in the short term prospect for the Russian participants of the foreign trade will become highly relevant recommendations on the management of disputes with customs authorities made during speeches of the judges of the Eurasian Economic Community Court from Russia Konstantin Chaika, Director of the Department of business development of the EEC Rustam Akberdin, Head of the Department of monitoring and judicial legal work of the Legal Department of EEC Alexander Naumov, Head of legal practice Corporate Lawyers Group (CIS) Irina Vakhterova.
It was noted on the conference that in addition to the traditional problems of entrepreneurs the new ones are arising, including those related to the protection of intellectual property. In particular, initiative of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia in the matter of legalization of parallel imports has been the subject of much controversy. The transition from the regional principle of exhaustion of rights to intellectual property to the international will also affect the partners in the Customs Union as we are under common customs legislation. According to the information given to the correspondent of Tks.ru by the partner Belarusian law office "Demidovich, Kasyanov and partners" Kira Kasyanova, today there is a general trend towards the legalization of parallel imports, but, in her opinion, the permit to import goods by unauthorized importers still needs to be coordinated with the rights of the right-holders.
“This issue needs to be solved together with the Law of Trademarks, - considers Valery Samtsov, General Director of the Interregional Center of Patent Services “Belintelpat” (Belorussia). - For the manufacturer of the goods, on the one hand, there is no economic sense to register trademarks in Belarus and Kazakhstan, because in Russia he produced goods and exhausted his rights, but on the other hand, it is very important to carry out marketing on the Belarusian and Kazakhstan territory and promote their products, and in this case it is needed to have your own dealer. However, for the dealer it is profitable to work by licenses, on an exclusive basis, which is lost in the legalization of parallel imports”. How this complex issue will be eventually resolved, it’s not yet clear, but for now in Russia, as was stated by Oksana Kurochkina, Head of the Legal Practice of Law office “Customs advocate”, in disputes between right-holders and parallel importers judicial practice is in favor of the right-holders.
During a very intense conference program, great interest of the audience was aroused by the speeches of foreign representatives of the international network Customs & Corporate Lawyers - Leonard Kirsch (USA), Attilio Carducci (Italy), Peter Kvicala (Czech Republic), Gunnar Nerdrum (Norway), who described the conditions in the markets of these countries. Organizers are planning to hold similar events every year.
October 18, 2013, Tks.ru