As part of a series of regional trade events held over the past several years, Eurofish and FAO held a workshop on the WTO and Fisheries in the Ukrainian capital Kiev in March.

The event targeted the government sector and industry from countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The programme of the workshop was divided into several sessions including WTO and fisheries, WTO and dispute settlement, international fish trade, sanitary protection and risk analysis, fisheries subsidies, international law and fisheries management, and certification, labeling and traceability issues.

An important part of the workshop was the session on Country Reports where delegates from 13 countries presented their national reports on fisheries and exchanged experiences. Presentations were made by nearly all the countries of which Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Turkey and Ukraine were WTO-member countries, while Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia and Uzbekistan were WTO-observer countries.

The audience expressed significant interest in all the country reports, but it was the presentations by the observer countries that drew a number of question. After a comprehensive introduction about the fisheries catching and trade sector, the Russian delegation explained the main reasons why the Russian Federation was still in the process of negotiations with WTO. The Russian delegate pointed out that national regulatory, infrastructural, and logistical systems would not be able to adjust to WTO requirements because of the big national catch although this has been changing by the governmental efforts. In addition, the present import tariffs for fish products and the current customs policy are more profitable for Russia. Considering the specific domestic import and export structure of fisheries products, membership of the WTO would lead to losses in the national federal budget. In recent times however, a degree of progress has again, after a two-year break, been made in the negotiations, which is an encouraging development.