The Eurasian Economic Union should keep the doors open to EU member states after signing pacts with the ASEAN and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Russian foreign minister said on Friday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th June, 2021) The Eurasian Economic Union should keep the doors open to EU member states after signing pacts with the ASEAN and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Russian foreign minister said on Friday.
"I am convinced that we should keep the doors open to other structures from our giant continent, including members of the European Union," Sergey Lavrov told the Kazakh news agency Khabar.
"We have been saying for years that it would be useful to create a Greater Eurasian Partnership, an integration framework that members of the EAEU, ASEAN and SCO could joint. We believe that any country on the Eurasian continent whether it is part of a bloc or has not joined one yet should be free to consider benefits of joining this bureaucracy-free, real life-oriented initiative," he said.
Kazakhstan is presiding over the EAEU economic union this year. The five-member bloc was created in 2015 to streamline the flow of goods and services between eastern European and Asian countries.
Lavrov said that Tajikistan was considering becoming an EAEU observer state, while Serbia, Singapore and Vietnam signed free trade deals with the bloc. An interim deal is in place with Iran and more pacts are in the pipeline, including with Egypt and Israel.
