Kazakhstan, EU discuss ways to facilitate transit trade in region

Kazakhstan is the largest trading partner of the EU in Central Asia. The volume of mutual trade in 2021 increased by a third compared to the previous year. The European Union, in turn, remains the largest investment and trade partner of Kazakhstan. Timo Hammaren, Deputy Head of Unit for Middle East, Turkey, Russia and Central Asia at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Trade, said this in Brussels following the results of the fifth meeting of the EU-Kazakhstan Cooperation Council in the trade configuration. According to him, the parties discussed ways to implement the trade section of the Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement. The delegations exchanged views on expanding the export list of Kazakh-made goods to the EU, as well as facilitating transit trade in the current political situation in the region.

“In this respect, we discussed technical barriers to trade, phytosanitary standards and how to facilitate for businesses to trade, so that these do not become obstacles to trade. We discussed issues like labelling, many other technical issues, but also bigger picture issues such as connectivity in the region, regional trade, how to facilitate that. There is a lot of transit trade going on, and, of course, there are concerns that the current political situation is affecting that transit and we discussed also ways to avoid such problems. And, of course, there is also the multilateral aspect. We discussed our cooperation in the World Trade Organization. Kazakhstan has a very important, leading role, actually this year. Kazakhstan is about to host the next WTO Ministerial meeting. And, of course, in that respect, we discussed how we can prepare that well and in which areas we can cooperate also in the WTO context,” Hammaren said.

Translation by Saniya Sakenova

Editing by Galiya Khassenkhanova