The Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy recommended the adoption in the second reading of the draft law "On Amendments to the Customs Code of Ukraine regarding the protection of intellectual property rights when moving goods across the customs border of Ukraine" (No. 1230). The decision was taken by the majority of the MPs present at the committee meeting, which took place on Wednesday. The newspaper "Voice of Ukraine " writes about this on Friday.
At the beginning of the meeting, the chairman of the committee, Danil Getmantsev, said that after the consideration of this bill in the session hall, 37 amendments were received in the first reading, but 11 of them were in violation of the Rules, therefore, the committee (and therefore in the session hall) should discuss only 26 of them.
Recall that the author of the bill Danil Getmantsev believes that this document will bring the provisions of the Customs Code of Ukraine in line with the provisions of EU Regulation No. 608/2013. “The draft law was developed with the aim of approximating the customs legislation of Ukraine in the field of intellectual property protection with the EU standards and practices, increasing the level of prevention and counteraction to the movement of goods that violate intellectual property rights across the customs border of Ukraine, and, as a consequence, helping to cleanse the domestic market from counterfeit products, which often does not meet the established safety requirements, ”reads the explanatory note to the bill.
However, the most heated debates during the committee meeting erupted over the amendments, which, according to MPs Nina Yuzhanina and Olga Belkova, will make parallel imports and will not effectively protect the Ukrainian market from dubious importers. (For the uninitiated: parallel import is when goods of a certain brand are imported without the consent of its owners). However, the chairman of the Customs Service, Maxim Nefedov, who was present at the meeting, supported the amendments by the author of the bill, Daniil Getmantsev. He is convinced that otherwise the customs will be endowed with "functions unusual for it." Market control authorities, not customs officers, should monitor the introduction of goods into circulation, Nefyodov is convinced. In the end, the committee members sided with the author of the bill, approving its amendments and recommending its adoption in the second reading.
Also at the meeting, they considered an appeal by the head of the National Bank, Yakov Smoliy, about the conflict of interests of one of the members of the NBU Council, Elena Shcherbakova, who combines work in the Rada with the position of adviser to the chairman of the board of Oschadbank. Taking into account the functions of the Council of the National Bank and the withdrawal of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (Nazka), the members of the committee did not find a conflict of interest in such a situation.
