European Union Relationship In Russia

The European Union has a number of relationships with nations that are not formally part of the Union. According to the European Union's official site, and a statement by Commissioner Günter Verheugen, the aim is to have a ring of countries, sharing EU's democratic ideals and joining them in further integration without necessarily becoming full member states. Those relationships are made through the European Free Trade Area, the EU's European Neighbourhood Policy, the World Trade Organization. Also, the EU has a free trade agreement with a number of countries.

The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) was created to allow European countries to partake in a free trade area with less integration as within the European Communities (later the

One of the several European countries, which is not included in the WTO, but it has trade relations with the EU - it is the Republic of Belarus. Although the European Union and Belarus signed a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) in 1995, which was intended to govern the mutual political and economic relations, this agreement was not ratified by the EU. Furthermore, the European Union has excluded Belarus from its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), which was originally designed to establish a "ring of friends" in the Union's geographical proximity. Brussels has claimed this exclusion to be a direct response to the establishment of an authoritarian regime under President Lukashenko. However, EU–Belarus trade relations are still covered by the Union's Generalised System of Preferences and the most favoured nation (MFN) provisions of the 1989 Agreement between the EU and the Soviet Union. Belarus is amongst the few states in Europe that have not asked for membership in the European Union. Similarly, the European Union has not offered membership to Minsk. Belarus has continuously sought to further its economic and political ties with Russia, being one of the founding members of the Union State (formerly the 'Union State of Russia and

No one size fits all. Since the EU’s many partners have different interests, the contents are tailored to each specific situation. Free trade agreements with developed countries and emerging economies are driven by economics and generally based on reciprocal market opening. Economic partnership agreements with African, Caribbean and Pacific countries combine both trade and development objectives.

EU trade policy is focusing on key partners such as the US, Canada and Japan, although attention is also being paid to emerging economies such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). These are seen as the new drivers of the world economy. The benefit of agreements with such countries for EU exporters is clear. The average tariff they face when selling to the rest of the world is still around 5 %. In some countries, tariffs are considerably higher.

A typical agreement will cover different sectors and issues and specify a timetable for individual product tariff reductions. Modern (EU) trade agreements include non-tariff matters ranging from intellectual property to public procurement. They contain various provisions, such as rules of origin, to determine which products are eligible for the tariffs being reduced or