EASC

1992 Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification

On 13 March 1992, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine signed an Agreement on the Coordinated Policy in the Field of Standardization, Metrology and Certification, which entered into force for all these countries. Georgia's accession entered into force on 22 May 1995. Azerbaijan's accession entered into force on 31 May 1995. Ukraine withdrew on 2 June 2023. Moldova withdrew on 4 September 2024. The Euro-Asian Council for Standardization, Metrology, and Certification (EASC) was created by this Agreement. Whereas in the past GOST meant "state standard", now GOST has come to mean "interstate standard". GOST standards were originally developed by the government of the Soviet Union as part of its national standardization strategy. After the disintegration of the USSR, the GOST standards acquired a new status of the regional standards. They are now administered by the Euro-Asian Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification (EASC), a standards organization chartered by the Commonwealth of Independent States. The International Organization for Standardization recognized the Council as a Regional Organization for Standardization in 1996. On 7 June 2013, the EASC and the Eurasian Economic Commission signed a memorandum on the harmonization of standards so that standards within the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Eurasian Economic Union do not conflict. In practice, thanks to the activities of the UN Economic Commission for Europe, the International Telecommunication Union, the International Electrotechnical Commission and the International Organization for Standardization (the three official languages of ISO are English, French and Russian), many technical standards used, for example, in the European Union and in the CIS countries are the same or very similar (for example, "Soviet" plugs and sockets are virtually identical to the standards in western Europe). In particular, in 2014 in order to switch from 220 volts to 230 volts in electrical power lines, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine voted to adopt the interstate standard GOST 29322-2014.