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19 March 2019, 11:48

Opinion: It is premature to call EAEU an economic union

MINSK, 19 March (BelTA) – It is premature to the EAEU an economic union today, Belarus Deputy Prime Minister Igor Petrishenko said in an interview with the Zvyazda newspaper, BelTA has learned.

“Our integration association has not yet evolved into an economic union. For the time being we are a de facto free trade area. It is impossible to build a common market and at the same time fight for privileged positions of national actors. It is not a common market. It is just trade between countries,” Igor Petrishenko said.

“When we were starting the integration, we proceeded from the fact that we were ready to consider goods and enterprises of each other our own in each of the countries. This is not how things are now. Paradoxically, it is third countries who benefit from this. In our turn we increasingly trade in goods from third countries not of own manufacture. In 2011 goods form third countries accounted for as little as 3.4% in mutual trade of the states members. In 2016 their share was already 8.4%, or 2.5 times more,” the vice premier said.

Speaking about the outcome of the five-year Eurasian integration, Igor Petrishenko noted that some goals have been met 100%. Some remain half-met and some projects have been fully frozen.

“In domestic markets, the member states continue to apply non-tariff barriers against each other disguised, for the sake of appearances, as sanitary, veterinary and phytosanitary measures. Exceptions to the national regime in public procurement, which were initially seen as exceptional measures, are now applied systematically and on a permanent basis,” he said.

The member states have sent complaints to the Eurasian Economic Commission regarding more than 200 barriers in domestic markets. Difficult intensive consultations are underway to resolve them. New obstacles appear faster than the old ones are removed (13 were eliminated in 2018 and 19 new ones surfaced).

In the market of services the general regulation does not apply to such important services as pipelines, power transmission, international road transport.

The deputy prime minister also noted that over the past five years the EAEU has virtually made no progress in matters of the common energy markets, public procurement, industrial subsidies, a number of other things.

“However, our country hopes that these are temporary difficulties in the process of building the full-scale Eurasian Economic Union and that they will be removed in the course of daily laborious work of all member states and the Eurasian Economic Commission,” Igor Petrishenko noted.

In his opinion, it is necessary to vest the supranational bodies with more powers so that they could use mechanisms of making the member states fulfill their obligations. “It is vital to adequately respond to the problems that have emerged since the union was launched, and to improve the legal framework so that the EAEU member states are held financially responsible for non-fulfillment of the obligations, as it is the case in the European Union,” Igor Petrishenko said.

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