On April 26, 2024, the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine, within the support of the TIPSTER Project of the Foundation for Support of Reforms in Ukraine and of the ReACT4UA international cooperation programme (“Application and implementation of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement in the field of trade”), funded by the German government and implemented by the German federal company Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, held a webinar “Quality Infrastructure in the System of Recovery and Development of Ukraine: Regional Context. Odesa Region” aimed at business representatives and their associations, organizations and quality infrastructure enterprises.
This webinar was the next in a series of planned educational online webinars with the participation of regional quality infrastructure centers to present their business opportunities. Regional centers that participate in the project: Poltava, Odesa, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Lviv. The project implementation period is March – September 2024.
These webinars are held to provide stakeholders with practical information on the current state of Ukraine’s quality infrastructure, changes in legislation, and application of relevant legislation in practice, especially on the way to entering European markets, in particular, the benefits of concluding the Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACAA Agreement, or the so-called “industrial visa-free”).
This webinar addressed issues related to the functioning of the quality infrastructure system of Ukraine as a tool for overcoming technical barriers to trade on the way to the EU single market, including in the context of preparations for the ACAA Agreement; to apply the knowledge gained to foreign economic activity, business opportunities from participation in the activities of Technical Committees for Standardization, as well as to inform about the current state of legal regulation in the areas of market surveillance and consumer protection in view of the requirements of the EU and also introduced the participants to opportunities for economic recovery and development in the Odesa region.
“Each element of the quality infrastructure, along with the other elements, aims to ensure economic efficiency and improve welfare. However, inconsistencies and conflicts of interest that exist between industry sectors as well as across national borders can contribute to the growth of non-tariff barriers, better known as technical barriers to trade. In this context, it is important to bring the national quality infrastructure system to the multilateral and regional level”, – said Oleksandr Pankov, Director of Technical Regulation Department of the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine.
The national quality infrastructure includes such fields as technical regulation, standardization, metrology, conformity assessment, accreditation and market surveillance and have to:
- promote the quality of products and services on a national scale,
- to stimulate demand for these products and services, activating individual enterprises and the economy as a whole.
- to help national industry meet the requirements of export markets,
- increase the competitiveness of the country’s economy and its ability to participate in global trade and value chains.
Thus, the quality infrastructure is a comprehensive set of institutions, systems, rules and regulations of a country that ensure that goods operating on national markets (both imported and domestically produced) meet safety requirements and other public interests.
The webinar participants were informed on the current state of the quality infrastructure system in Ukraine, the main achievements in preparation for the ACAA Agreement, the main trends in the development of the market surveillance and consumer protection system, and the importance of participation in activities of technical committees for standardization.
The feedback and active participation of participants on additional questions on the agenda was important. To establish close cooperation with businesses, institutions and organizations, which intend to integrate into the single European quality infrastructure space, and other stakeholders, the Communication Platform on Technical Regulation (www.techreg.in.ua) was created and is now in operation. On the platform, stakeholders can ask questions related to technical regulation, standardization, metrology, conformity assessment, accreditation, and market surveillance.
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