Armenia has to build up relations with Eurasian union: prime minister says

YEREVAN, December 5. / ARKA /. Armenia has to build up relations with the Eurasian Union and implement measures to deepen and broaden them, Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan said today during a Q&A parliament session.

"Armenia has a vital interest in this matter, and it means that we have to deepen and broaden our relations with the Eurasian Union. I am sure that it is in the interests of Armenia, and we will go in this direction,” he said.

He said during the latest meeting of the Armenian-Russian intergovernmental commission on cooperation the parties signed a document whereby Armenia should cooperate with Customs Union (Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus) and the Eurasian Economic Commission on some trade related issues.

"Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus have already transferred much of their powers to the Customs Union and the Eurasian Commission and will transfer more,’ Sargsyan said.

He said that from now on Armenia will have to discuss bilateral economic issues with these countries in the framework of these structures, "just as we are working with the EU."

He also stressed that Armenia does not think that its European and Eurasian integrations are conflicting. "On the contrary, we see that it is a complementary process. We signed, and the parliament ratified the agreement on free trade within the CIS. Today, we are in talks with the EU on free trade zone," he added.

The idea of the Eurasian Union was first proposed in 1994 by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. In early October 2011, in an article for "Izvestia" daily Russia’s Putin wrote that the Eurasian Union could be set up on the basis of the customs union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. The article said the Eurasian Union is not an attempt to restore former Soviet Union or replace the CIS, but an effective "link" between Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, with close coordination of economic and monetary policies of member states.

The EU has been negotiating an Association Agreement with Armenia since July 2010 in the framework of the Eastern Partnership and the European Neighborhood Policy. The future Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area will be part of this Agreement, which aims at closely associating this country to the EU both in economic and political terms, in line with the Eastern Partnership objectives. The future trade relations will therefore expand significantly beyond the scope of current cooperation, set out in the Partnership and Cooperation Agreements, in force since July 1999. -0-