OREANDA-NEWS. On June 19, 2007 the position of the Republic of Belarus in the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) has remained unchanged – this country steps up for the soonest complete establishment of the Customs Union so that the [EurAsEC] member states could co-operate more effectively, said the President of the Republic of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, at meeting with the EurAsEC Secretary General, Grigory Rapota, reported the Presidential website www.president.gov.by.

The Head of State regards EurAsEC as the most promising and effective integration association in the post-Soviet space.

Grigory Rapota has informed the Belarusian President on the preparations currently underway for the meeting of the Interstate Council of the Heads of State of the EurAsEC member states due in early October 2007 in Dushanbe. Today’s meeting also focused on the Dushanbe agenda, specifically on the issues related to preparing a legal framework for the creation of a Customs Union within the framework of the EurAsEC.

Alexander Lukashenko has voiced several remarks on improving the Eurasian Economic Community, which, as Grigory Rapota emphasised, will be carefully considered.

Recently Belarus put forward initiatives related to co-operation between countries in bio-technologies, in creating a single economic and energy space and exploiting efficiently the transit potential. Fulfilling projects in these areas will intensify economic integration within EurAsEC, Grigory Rapota said. “A kind of legal space can be created. But without being buttressed by projects in the real sector of economy, the integration will not be full, and maybe it will not even work at all,” he said.

Currently, experts are working on an interstate programme of co-operation in the sphere of bio-technologies.

According to the EurAsEC Secretary General, the Belarus initiative to develop transit potential of the EurAsEC member states is crucially important, not only for Belarus, which is one of the major linking bridges between Russia and Europe, but also for the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan and other states.

There are several pilot programmes currently in progress, which will help in addressing this issue. For instance, the EurAsEC Transport Policy Council, which includes the heads of transport administrations of the EurAsEC member states, has taken a decision to design a pilot project for speeding up container shipments between the Chinese-Kazakh and the Belarusian-Polish borders.

The EurAsEC Secretary General has reported to the President of Belarus on the results of the work on preparing the legal basis for the Customs Union. The work is progressing well, he said. “There are 2-3 issues still to be resolved before the upcoming EurAsEC summit,” he added.

According to Grigory Rapota, one of the pivotal targets is to elaborate an acceptable form of providing equal access to energy resources for the member states. This problem is of major importance both for the Customs Union construction and the creation of a single economic space which would involve competition between economic entities under equal conditions for all. Belarus advocates the soonest resolution of this problem. It will furnish a good impetus for the development of the economies of the EurAsEC countries and will help raise their competitive capacity.

In view of Grigory Rapota, yet another unresolved issue in the formation of the Customs Union is adoption of a decision-taking mechanism in the organizations which will be set up to control the customs territory and address tariff policy issues.

The legal framework of the Customs Union should be based on 23 acting agreements. Presently, the member states are considering a plan of measures to harmonize these documents. It is expected that this work will have been completed before the forthcoming session of the Interstate Council of the EurAsEC heads of state.

Five states – Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan have been the members of the EurAsian Economic Community since its founding. In January 2006, the EurAsEC was joined by Uzbekistan. In May 2002, Moldova and Ukraine were granted observes status with the EurAsEC at their request. In 2003, Armenia made a similar request, which was approved.

Up to now, the EurAsian Economic Community has adopted 94 international treaties, 83 of them have entered into force while 11 are undergoing relevant interstate procedures.