Russia is granted market economy status by EU
The Eurpoean Commission announced the official recognition of
Russia as a market economy on November 7, 2002. This move is seen as a boost of
Russia's accession to the WTO.
The change of
Russia's status was first proposed by Brussels in a
Russia-EU summit in May 2002 and was approved following EU's amedment of its own anti-dumping and anti-subsidy laws. Prior to May summit, EU officials warned
Russia to make a bigger effort to open up its energy sector to market forces and eliminate subsidies that provide Russian enterprises an advantageous position against their EU counterparts.
Upon this decision,
Russia will be treated in the same way as the other developed countries in anti-dumping investigations which means that the country's actual costs and prices will be based on when calculating the margins instead of a proxy cost from a third country. Furthermore
Russia will be subject to the anti-subsidy margins of the other developed countries due to its new status as of November 8, 2002, the date when the amended EU laws came into force.
Russia was recognised as a market economy by the US in June 2002.
Other non-market economy countries are
China, Vietnam and many former Soviet bloc countries excluding
Kazakhstan to which market-satus was granted recently.