“However, to date, the Eurasian Economic Commission has not officially received any documents from Turkey regarding the creation of a free trade zone,” said the press service. “The trade turnover of the EEU with Turkey exceeded $35 billion. Turkey ranks sixth among the largest trade partner countries of the EEU.”
On Apr.17, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said that the EEU will create opportunities for the Turkish business to enter the new markets.
Commenting on the readiness of the EEU to accept new countries into the alliance, the press service said that the Eurasian Economic Union is an open integration association, which is ready for economic cooperation with all interested countries that share its aims and principles, on the terms agreed by the member states.
“The process of integration rapprochement between the EEU and the countries concerned can have different formats, namely the signing of the memoranda of cooperation in various spheres of economy, creation of a trade dialogue between the EEU and the third countries, free trade zone, joining the EEU,” the Eurasian Economic Commission said. “The Article 108 of the Treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union clearly regulates the sequence of steps for accession to this union. In order to get the status of the candidate state for accession to the union, the interested country sends a relevant appeal to the chairman of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council.”
Currently, the number of the countries which have officially expressed desire to develop the trade and economic relations with the Eurasian Economic Union in the format of the free trade zone agreement, exceeds 30.
“It doesn’t mean that such agreement will be automatically signed with all of these countries,” said the Eurasian Economic Commission. “Based on the official application of a country, a joint research group is created to examine the expediency of signing a free trade agreement between the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union and the applicant country.”
Based on the results of the analysis, the sides jointly make a decision on the expediency of starting the official negotiations on creating a free trade zone, said the Commission. “To date, official decisions have been made to create such research groups with Vietnam, Israel and India.”
Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan signed a Treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union in May 2014 in Astana. The treaty entered into force on Jan.1, 2015. The creation of the Eurasian Economic Union allows to bring the member states of the former Customs Union, the total GDP of which accounted for 85 percent of CIS GDP, to a higher level of integration. Armenia joined the Eurasian Economic Union on Jan.2.
The Eurasian Economic Union covers one-seventh of the land area in the world and currently, produces 4 percent of the world GDP.
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