The compliance with standards of the technical regulation is indispensable for the import of products subject to conformity to Russia and other member states of the Eurasian Economic Union.
German manufacturers, are confused by the field of conformity assessment. A lot of them are confronted by the question: what's the difference between TR CU Certificate and EAC Certificate?
In fact, it is just two different names for the same process of conformity assessment, whereby both names are actually wrong or an incomplete and misleading translation.
To understand the background of the names, one has to dive a little deeper into history.
90 years ago, an at this time unprecedented project of standardization was originated in the Soviet Union. The new system of standardization should cover a large part of the Eurasian land mass with a population of more than 250 million.
This system was called GOST - an abbreviation of «Государственный Стандарт», translated "state standard". The overarching standardization was existential for the Soviet planned economy. Until 1965, hundreds of compulsory GOST standards had been introduced.
In 1991, the Soviet Union fell apart into several states, which started developing their own standards and conformity assessment procedures. In Russia, an extensive reform of the Soviet GOST standards was implemented, aiming to simplify the very confusing GOST system.
In 2002, the law „On technical regulation“ was passed in the Russian Federation. According to this law, new technical guidelines (regulations) should be developed. The „technical regulation“ was reduced to the abbreviation „TR“. The technical regulation is a document that contains binding requirements for products, services and production processes.
In 2010, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus founded the free trade area that later became known as customs union. The introduction of a unified technical regulation was also agreed upon to facilitate the exchange of goods between the participating countries. As a result, in the year 2011 the unified technical requirements, called "Technical Regulations of the Customs Union“, abbreviated "TR CU", were introduced in the territory of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and later Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.
The European CE mark served as a model, a lot of the technical regulations were harmonized with the EU's guidelines. Similarly to the CE mark, the unified conformity mark of the customs union was introduced. This mark is composed of three stylized letters: "EAC" as abbreviation for "EurAsian Conformity".
Consequently, the name "EAC certificate" is completely identical withe the name „TR CU certificate“. Actually, the confirmation attestation procedure is called "Attestation of Conformity with the Technical Regulations of the Customs Union". Due to the length of the name, it is not surprising that the name was colloquially abbreviated as "TR CU certificate" or "EAC certificate". It is to be noted that the term "certificate" is also wrong, as two types of conformity attestation procedures exist: the certificate and the declaration.
However, there is more to it than that. As a result of the extension of the Customs Union, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) came into existence. For this community, new technical regulations are introduced on the basis of the custom union's regulations, the conformity mark remains the same.
