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Quality Standards for Increased Trade in the Eastern Partnership Countries

The Eastern Partnership Region

The Eastern Partnership (EaP) – funded and commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) – is a joint initiative involving the EU, its Member States and five Eastern European Partner countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. Belarus used to be part of the group as well.

Launched in 2009, the EaP is a strategic and ambitious partnership. It aims to strengthen and deepen the political and economic relations between the EU, its Member States and the partner countries, as well as supports sustainable reform processes in countries of Eastern Partnership. It is a specific Eastern dimension of the European Neighborhood Policy.
 

PTB project with EaP

The German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) also supports reform processes in the EaP region and finances projects in the regionand in selected partner countries also at a bilateral level. On behalf of BMZ the PTB is implementing a regional cooperation project with its EaP partners since 2018 (“Using Regional Synergies of the Eastern Partnership Countries in the Field of Quality Infrastructure”, 11/2018 – 10/2022).

The new cooperation phase “Quality Standards for Increased Trade in the Eastern Partnership Countries”, 11/2022 – 10/2025 is touching upon the role of Quality Infrastructure referring to competitiveness, innovation and trade as an interconnected system with all its components (Standardization, Metrology, Accreditation, Conformity Assessment). The implementation focus is at national level according to the respective situation and needs of each of the partner countries. Wherever applicable, regional synergies are created and activities upscaled to a regional level. For more details on the new project approach, please have a look at the project flyer or the about the project section on the webpage.
 

Green Transition and Digitalization as Cross-Cutting Priorities

Besides the systemic QI-approach of the project also intends to contribute to key topics of our modern society: Green Transition and Digitalization. Climate change and environmental degradation are an existential global threat. To overcome these challenges, the European Green Deal is Europe's new growth strategy, which will transform the Union into a modern, resource-efficient, and competitive economy. The European Green Deal aims to make Europe climate neutral by 2050, boost the economy through green technology, create sustainable industry and transport, and cut pollution. QI services have an important role to play in this transformation process. The project intends to particularly support EaP Partners in their endeavor to contribute to the Green Transition.

Digitalization is another cross-cutting topic and corner stone in any transformation process of our modern society. The project aims to support partner institutions to comply with digitalization challenges in order to serve their clients in a more effective, efficient and transparent way.
 

Demand-Orientation by Value Chain Approach

Another novelty of the new project phase is that the project approach tries to exemplify the utilization of QI-services (demand vs supply side) studying their application in a specific value chain or related to a selected product. For each of the EaP countries a value chain / product with relevance for the national economy and export potential has been identified. For this value chain / product the role of QI-services will be analyzed and respective gaps identified.

This exercise will follow the well-established CALIDENA-methodology which is a participatory approach developed and applied by PTB to stimulate quality in value chains. The result of a CALIDENA exercise is an action plan, that will serve the sector as an orientation for future improvement towards quality requirements. For more details on the CALIDENA methodology, please have a look at the PTB CALIDENA website. Country studies related to the CALIDENA approach in each of the EaP countries can be found in the following summaries of value chains:

We are thanking you for your interest in the project.

The PTB project team

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