What is a GOST certificate?
The acronym GOST comes from Государственный Стандарт (Gosudarstvenny Standart), which means “state standard”. Since their introduction almost a century ago, GOST certificates have established the technical safety and quality requirements necessary to authorize a product for sale, first in the USSR, and then in Russia and most of the former Soviet countries. After the events of the early 1990s, each of the former Soviet countries then defined their own standards, giving rise, for example, to GOST K for Kazakhstan and GOST B for Belarus. When we simply talk about a GOST certificate in general, then we refer to GOST R, which is a series of standards that apply to Russia as a whole.
We are going to focus, in general, on the GOST R certificate, but the truth is that the system is very similar in every country that has adopted it. In essence, GOST certificates, when they are of a mandatory type, are essential documents for customs clearance.
This is evidenced by the fact that, since 2002, the institutions responsible for the certification system are, on the one hand, the Rosstandart (Росстандарт) certification body, and, on the other hand, the Federal Customs Service (FTS, formerly known as GTK: Федеральная таможенная служба).
How to checked your product need a GOST R Certificate or not?
Our calculations show that only 7% of the companies that contact us to get a “GOST” Certificate actually need a certificate of this type. The vast majority are unaware of the existence of the EAC, and still have memories of times gone by regulations (to find out everything you need to know about the EAC Marking, click here
Even though it isn’t as frequent these days, the Russian client themselves, or an importer, can sometimes become “outdated” and transmit an incorrect request to the Spanish exporter.
If you are looking for information and are unsure about what particular procedure applies to your products, then we recommend that you send us an enquiry. We will send you a quick response to let you know what the regulations are.
Types of GOST certificates
GOST certification consists of several types of certificates, and part of our work is to determine exactly which of them should be used.
Although the process of customs integration that culminated in 2014 with the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union has made many GOST R certificates obsolete (replacing them with the aforementioned EAC Certification), there are still products for which Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia apply their own national legislation.
These products simply divide into two groups:
Products subject to compulsory certification
Products NOT subject to compulsory certification
A very common mistake is to think that products not subject to compulsory certification can be exported freely. However, exporting is never free, and there are two reasons for this.
On the one hand, the GOST regulation is not the only one that applies in terms of safety and public health. Therefore, there may be cases where customs formalities become complicated due to the absence of a specific certificate, for example, the Epidemiological Health Certificate, which is Eurasian in scope. This is the situation that tile exporting companies found themselves in before 2011.
On the other hand, even when the authorities do not require any documents to confirm specific product characteristics, companies may need an Exemption Letter for customs clearance, or a Voluntary GOST Certificate to meet the business or commercial requirements of their own Russian partners.
As a result of all this, if you have any products that aren’t subject to Eurasec regulations, you must request at least one of these national certificates:
- Voluntary GOST R
- Mandatory GOST R
- Exemption Letter
