Chapter Eleven
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action plan,^30 the three member countries delivered the necessary legal
framework and thus the Customs Union was officially launched on
January 1, 2010. By the end of 2011, the necessary legal and regulatory
framework of the Customs Union was also already in existence.
In the meantime, the three member countries of the Customs Union
adjusted their trilateral trade to reflect the norms and rules of the World
Trade Organisation (WTO), although only Russia had become a member
thus far. Belarus and Kazakhstan set out on their way towards
membership in the WTO as well. The two countries also “imposed the
Russian tariff as the common external tariff of the Customs Union.”^31
Furthermore, all three countries abolished the customs controls at
common internal frontiers and introduced new administrative structures.
So far, the reciprocal trade within the Customs Union has been USD 47.1
bn in 2010; USD 63.5 bn in 2011; and USD 68.1 bn in 2012, which
already shows a positive development.^32 As a result, foreign trade with
third countries in goods produced by the countries of the Customs Union
was USD 939.3 bn in 2012, and reached USD 279.1 bn in the first quarter
of 2013.^33
One of the major achievements of the Customs Union was that
supranational executive and judicial bodies, such as the Eurasian
Economic Commission, were also launched during the second stage of
Eurasian integration in 2012.^34 The main supranational competencies of
the Eurasian Economic Commission encompass various issues, with
particular focus on: changing the import duty rates; introducing the
commodity nomenclature of the Customs Union; establishing tariff
preferences and tariff quotas; and defining the system of the tariff
preferences, as well as introducing non-tariff regulatory measures.^35 The
Commission also introduced a unified system of customs regulation as
well as common customs procedures and unified methods for valuing
imported goods or determining their origin.^36 Further, the Commission is
concerned with drafting and adopting technical regulations, which will be
very important for the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union.^37 The
(^30) Ibid.
(^31) Tarr, “The Eurasian Customs Union among Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan:
Can it succeed where its predecessor failed?”, 1.
(^32) Ibid, 17.
(^33) Ibid.
(^34) Khristenko, “Forward by Viktor Khristenko”, 5.
(^35) Eurasian Economic Integration: Facts and Figures, 14.
(^36) Ibid, 15.
(^37) Ibid, 16.