Russia has to cancel preferences for Ukrainian imports - Putin

MINSK, August 26 (Itar-Tass) - Russia will have to cancel preferences for Ukrainian imports as a measure to protect its market and introduce the standard trade regime in the conditions of Ukraine’s agreement on association with the EU, President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday. “In full compliance with the provisions of the CIS Free Trade Agreement and WTO norms we will have to cancel preferences for imports from Ukraine,” Putin said. “I’d like to say that we are not going to discriminate against anybody, we won’t do this,” the Russian president said. “We will just have to introduce the standard trade regime for Ukraine; the same that is applied also between Russia and the EU,” he added. Ukraine and the EU signed the political block of the association agreement on March 21, 2014, and the economic block - on June 27. After the Ukrainian parliament ratifies the document, the free trade zone with zeroing the import duties will take effect between the European Union and Ukraine. Two weeks after the ratification, the agreement will take “temporary” effect. This formula was invented by the European Commission for accelerating the document’s coming into force without waiting for the so-called democratic procedure of its ratification by all 28 EU member states, which will take more than a year. Russia’s authorities have repeatedly said that if Ukraine enters the free trade zone with the EU, Russia would have to protect its internal market from the duty-free inflow of European goods through Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine have signed about 400 various agreements - bilateral and within the CIS framework. The EU insists on Ukraine’s withdrawal from a number of important economic agreements, which threatens Ukraine’s agro-industrial enterprises and allied industries that employ seven to eight million workers - half of the total able-bodied population. The whole machine-building industry of Ukraine and its energy and military-industrial sectors face a similar problem. Russia says that if it preserves the free trade regime with Ukraine after the opening of Ukraine’s market for the EU, the Russian market will be faced with unlimited re-exports of EU products through Ukraine, which will be damaging for Russian producers. Russia is based on the Annex 6 to the CIS Free Trade Agreement that allows setting inside the free trade zone customs duties above zero for the countries that concluded similar agreements with other states.