The European Commission is this week organising two workshops in Astana, in collaboration with the Kazakh authorities. The workshops are taking place at expert level in order to strengthen EU-Kazakhstan trade cooperation as part of the enhanced partnership and cooperation agreement that has been in force since 1 July 2016.
The Commission body in charge of technical assistance and information exchange, the TAIEX, will thus bring together leading EU experts in public administration from several EU member states and their Kazakh counterparts from Astana and various regions of Kazakhstan. The workshops will be on technical barriers to trade and intellectual property rights.
The first workshop, on 20-21 November, aims to present the EU technical regulation, accreditation, standardisation, measuring and weighing systems, and practice. The goal is to see which elements could be used in the Kazakhstan–Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) environment (which links Kazakhstan, Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Russia), and to consider which aspects of Kazakhstan–EAEU practice could be adapted to align the system to the EU’s.
The second workshop, on 22-23 November, aims to present and discuss EU legislation and practices on intellectual property rights protection in different areas.
The strengthened partnership and cooperation agreement between the EU and Kazakhstan was signed on 21 December 2015 and entered into force provisionally on 1 May 2016 (see EUROPE 11521).
The agreement strengthens EU-Kazakhstan trade cooperation on the basis of the application of fundamental WTO rules and principles in bilateral trade relations between the EU and Kazakhstan to ensure a better regulatory environment for business in areas such as trade in services, the establishment and operation of companies, capital movements, procurement and intellectual property rights. Kazakhstan has been a member of the WTO since 2015.
The EU has become Kazakhstan’s biggest trading partner, accounting for with almost 40% of the country’s trade in 2016. Bilateral trade was more than €17 billion in 2016. The EU is also Kazakhstan’s largest foreign investor, representing over half of total foreign direct investment in Kazakhstan. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)