It is often said that the Eurasian Economic Union is a more formal union than the European Union. But the scale of the Eurasian Economic Forum and the EAEU summit suggests otherwise. Judge for yourself: more than 2,700 participants from 33 countries. Six major thematic blocks. More than 30 events that seemed to cover all possible areas. The participants talked about agriculture, manufacturing sector, pharmaceutics, advanced technologies... And leaders of countries that are not members of the EAEU participated in the forum and the summit. Moreover, some of them are located on other continents. We wrote about the forum in detail yesterday. Today we will talk about what made the EAEU summit memorable, who participated in it, and how Aleksandr Lukashenko sees the future of the union.
Let’s start with the participants. In addition to the leaders of the G5 countries and observer countries the negotiating table gathered leaders and representatives from, for example, the UAE and Mongolia in an expanded format. This is definitely a positive development. It means that the EAEU is being watched and seen as having potential. But not everyone views it favorably: some are skeptical, and some are openly hostile. Our president also spoke about it.
“Some look at us kindly as we gain momentum at rather a good pace and join our union. Others bide their time for the moment we stumble or even split up. Which expectations will come true depends solely on us,” Aleksandr Lukashenko is convinced.
No one needs meetings for the sake of meetings is another message from the Belarusian leader. These words are often heard from Aleksandr Lukashenko. Belarus approached the organization of the EAEU summit with the same principle. About ten documents were signed in Minsk. It is a fairly substantial portfolio. The economic partnership agreement with the UAE and the provisional trade agreement with Mongolia are concrete confirmation that the EAEU is being looked at favorably.
“Theory without practice is dead, practice without theory is blind” are the words attributed to the famous Russian military leader Alexander Suvorov. The key thing is to strike a balance, as the Belarusian president said today.
“If we want our union to be a working and efficient structure rather than a platform for theoretical discussions (although this is not a bad thing either), the pace of development of our union for the next five years should be intense, every direction needs a clear algorithm of actions leading to a concrete common result,” Aleksandr Lukashenko believes.
The summit participants arrived at the Palace of Independence one after another, literally a minute apart. All except for the Armenian prime minister. Yesterday and today Nikol Pashinyan worked in Minsk remotely. In other words, he spoke in his usual online format. At the forum Nikol Pashinyan was even given two big screens.
The Iranian president also spoke remotely due to very understandable and respectable reasons. On the whole, the situation in the Middle East region was repeatedly pointed out by many leaders.
“The recent strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities under IAEA oversight violate provisions of international law in the most dangerous way, including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Geneva Conventions of 1949. I will not even talk about the feelings that such actions arouse in Belarus, the country that suffered the most as a result of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Back then radioactive fallout was registered even in Great Britain, Germany, and Sweden. They probably think that it won’t affect them now. Especially the country, which has committed such acts,” Aleksandr Lukashenko outlined Belarus’ position.
But let's get back to Armenia... Our president drew attention to Nikol Pashinyan’s personal absence yesterday. He said that the EAEU countries should figure out why Armenia had taken this position. If there are unspoken words, both sides need to sort it out. Nikol Pashinyan, who spoke right after our president, did not remark on it. Although he surely took into account Belarus’ position.
A lot was said about accomplishments of the Eurasian Economic Union. And they do exist, there is no need to hide it. The aggregate GDP of the countries and regional integration associations, with which the EAEU has established and formalized relations, is $72 trillion. For comparison, it is equal to half of the world economy and half of the population of the entire planet.
The total GDP of the members of the Eurasian Economic Union has also increased: from $1.6 trillion to $2.6 trillion. Meanwhile, the total volume of mutual trade within the union has doubled to $97 billion. Moreover, 93% of transactions between our countries use national currencies. It is still very early to talk about dedollarization, but this is a very serious indicator.
The Belarusian president could not help but make some remarks. He is convinced that the EAEU countries need to speed up the creation of advanced manufacturing facilities. Meanwhile, two projects worth $17 million were approved in January: the production of switches for railroads and cabins for harvesters. “It’s ridiculous to name these projects,” added Aleksandr Lukashenko. According to the president, it is necessary to speed up in areas where Western corporations have a special advantage: pharmaceutics, automotive industry and microelectronics... Otherwise, we will not be able to achieve import independence, which is being talked about increasingly often now.
Food security is talked about just as much. Everything is not so smooth with this topic either. Aleksandr Lukashenko even called the situation alarming. In order to stabilize prices for certain goods, we have to open the market a bit to imports. We need results in matters concerning digital development as well. For instance, in order to use digital signatures. And many other things. The president has talked about it in detail. You can read everything.
On the whole, the summit’s organization was best described by its participants, who are more familiar with it than an outside observer. Shavkat Mirziyoyev, for example, remarked on “Belarus’ fruitful presidency in the Eurasian Economic Union, during which multilateral practical interaction was noticeably intensified”. And Vladimir Putin said at yesterday’s forum that hundreds of representatives of large, medium and small Russian businesses had come to Minsk. All useful ideas, recommendations, suggestions will be taken into account in consequent efforts to strengthen the Eurasian Economic Union, the Russian leader assured.
The Eurasian Economic Union will surely become stronger and more modernized. And it may be worthy of the title of EAEU 2.0 in the foreseeable future. In any case, the Belarus president outlined its contours in great detail at yesterday’s forum. After all, as the president said: “In a situation of global turbulence, it is important not to be at the tail end of events, but to influence the global agenda in a positive way, to have well-thought-out models for responding to external challenges.”
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