"The attempts to find mutually balanced trilateral decisions on lifting specific concerns, as a prerequisite for considering the possibility of maintaining the current free trade regime between Russia and Ukraine, did not find understanding," said Ulyukayev.
In particular, the Minister expressed his dissatisfaction with the need for additional funds for the recertification of Russian products exported to Ukraine.
"We will need to recertify Russian products exported to Ukraine, which is a long and costly procedure. The need to re-equip production capacities will lead to additional expenditures for lab tests and obtaining new certificates of conformity," said Ulyukayev.
Ulyukayev said, it would also break established cooperative ties because of the significant differences in existing technical regulations of the Customs Union and EU regulations. The suspension of deliveries for the certain period to obtain new certificates may not subsequently allow Russian companies to return to the previous level of mutual trade. Thus, the Russian industry will suffer severe damages, he said.
"To minimize these risks, we offer our partners to maintain until 2025 the application in the territory of Ukraine of the acts in these areas [technical regulations and standardization for Russian products exported to Ukraine], along with the acts implemented by Ukraine within the framework of the Association Agreement with the EU," said Ulyukayev.
As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukraine and the EU signed the political part of the Association Agreement on March 21, 2014, and the economic part - in late June, 2014, following the presidential elections. President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has signed an Association Agreement with the EU in its entirety.
At first it was assumed that a free trade regime between Ukraine and the EU will start working from October, 2014. However, in September, 2014, after consultations in Brussels between representatives of the European Commission, Ukraine and the Russian Federation, the parties have agreed to postpone the introduction of the relevant provisions of the agreement until December 31, 2015.
Read alsoYatsenyuk: Russia to close its market for Ukrainian farm produce in 2016On August 5, the Directorate General for Trade of the European Commission reported that tripartite consultations between Ukraine, the EU and Russia at the ministerial level for the implementation of certain provisions of the Association Agreement in terms of deep and comprehensive free trade area are scheduled for September 7.
