How to Label Fur Products for the Eurasian Economic Union

In the effort of eliminating undeclared fur imports, the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) came up with a very high-tech solution. The Union of Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan introduced new control mechanism based on attaching radio-frequency identification tags to imported fur products. Which imports are subject to the requirement? The legislators of the Eurasian Economic Commission – the governing organ of the Union - had answered this question by approving the list of commodities, which will be in scope of the mandatory labeling with control tags.

The approved List of goods subject to verification marks contain:

• garments of mink
• garments of nutria
• garments of fox
• garments of rabbit or hare
• garments of raccoon
• garments of sheepskin
• garments of other types of fur

Guidelines and certain parameters of the new tagging mechanism, for example size, security features and protective elements and information that needs to be included, are given in the introducing EEU Agreement itself, however, Member States were given discretion to play around with them a bit.

In the wake of adoption of the Agreement and its follow-up implementing Decisions by all Member States of the Union, it will be prohibited to purchase, store, use, transport and sell these specified goods without appropriate marks, except for when certain exempting conditions are met. These include:

• transport of goods under customs control
• goods imported into the customs territory by organisers and participate of international exhibitions and fairs as samples and exhibits
• goods intended to be sold in duty free shops
• storage of listed goods under customs supervision in the temporary storage warehouses and customs warehouses
• storage and use of goods by manufacturers
• transport and storage and use by individuals of goods imported as goods intended for personal use, and acquired in the retail trade, etc

Remember, garments of fur listed above manufactured in or imported into the Eurasian Economic Union will need to be tagged with RF Tag (RFID-tag) viewed as a form of strict control, protection and monitoring. Each chip will carry information on the manufacturers and suppliers and be easily accessible by the relevant monitoring authorities. Hope is that this will, in turn, help to identify contraband items entering the market in the Member States of the Union.

Currently, the Agreement is undergoing the internal procedure of ratification by all the Member States with Russia leading the way and setting the prompt implementation trend.

To find out how you can stay on top of changes to textiles regulations and mandatory standards around the world, sign up now for a 30-day free trial of C2P, our compliance knowledge management platform!