In the course of this event, Valery Nikolaevich Koreshkov, President of the State Committee for Standardisation of the Republic of Belarus (GOSSTANDART), and DDr. Elisabeth Stampfl-Blaha, Deputy Managing Director of Austrian Standards Institute (ASI), signed a co-operation agreement between GOSSTANDART and ASI.

To implement the agreement, the partners gave each other access rights to standards databases to make it easier for them to provide export-relevant information to their customers.

Moreover, construction experts from Belarus will come to Austrian Standards on a study visit in September 2009 to learn more about the implementation of the "Eurocodes".

Bilateral trade between Belarus and Austria has significantly intensified in recent years: in 2007, Austrian exports to Belarus rose by 32.5 % (machinery and equipment, pharmaceuticals, plastics, paper and board), while imports grew by 94.5 % (iron and steel as well as products thereof, furniture, beddings, clothes, plastics).