Opinions & Interviews

Belarus president in favor of more efforts to develop trade inside Eurasian Economic Union

YEREVAN, 1 October (BelTA) – Countries of the Eurasian Economic Union should primarily think about happiness inside the union. The development of trade with third countries should come second. Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko made the relevant statement in an interview with the TV channel Russia One on the sidelines of the session of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Yerevan on 1 October, BelTA has learned.

Aleksandr Lukashenko said: “The president of Kazakhstan says our domestic trade has shrunk, our foreign trade with other countries is declining. I think before talking about the Eurasian Economic Union’s overall trade we should think about ways to find happiness inside the union, about ways to secure the largest profits from domestic trade. And it is necessary to persistently dismantle barriers if we are to achieve that goal.”

The president stated there are problems with that. In his words, there are dozens of barriers in the Eurasian Economic Union and the work to remove them proceeds very slowly.

At the same time Aleksandr Lukashenko noted he had a positive attitude towards matters of state during the current summit in Yerevan. “I see strong interest in our union. They [third countries] are important. They encourage us to be more perfect, to be more appealing to the rest of the world,” Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed. He pointed out that the Eurasian Economic Union is located between gigantic organizations and countries: the European Union and the United States of America on one side and China and the Asian-Pacific region on the other side. “It is a very rapidly developing group of countries. We should definitely use this factor,” Aleksandr Lukashenko believes. He added Belarus is ready to cooperate with as many countries as possible, however, one needs to know how to protect one’s own interests and interests of manufacturers.

The next summit of the Eurasian Economic Union will take place in St Petersburg in December. The decision on the composition of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Commission is supposed to be made then. The commission will work under Belarus’ presidency as from February 2020. “Naturally, the chairman will be from Belarus. We will make up our minds on the distribution of portfolios between the ministers. We’ve discussed all options,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said. “Russia has taken a small timeout due to Belarus’ proposals. But we still have time. Moreover, we’ve decided to work out some unified procedure and leave the matter up to the prime ministers to decide in order to avoid having to talk about these matters too much.”

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