EURASEC AS THE LOCOMOTIVE OF INTEGRATION PROCESSES
MOSCOW (RIA Novosti's analyst Arseny Paliyevsky) - At their summit meeting, which came to an end in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, EurAsEC member states (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Tajikistan and Belarus) concluded an agreement on cooperation in the securities market. As the document says, the agreement aims to create a single inter-state securities market, develop and adopt measures within the EurAsEC to protect the interests of investors operating on the securities market, create an information database and provide equal access for all parties to it.
Under the agreement, transactions on the inter-state securities market will be effected in compliance with the legislation of the country, on the territory of which such transactions are carried out. In this process, "each of the parties shall provide on its securities market the most favored treatment regime to the residents of other parties," the document says. The agreement was concluded for a term of five years and will be prolonged for subsequent five-year periods, if none of the parties sends, no less than six months prior to the expiry of a regular five-year period, to the depositary a written notice of its intention to terminate this agreement.
The summit also took decisions on such issues as the effective development of water energy resources, the creation of a single EurAsEC tariff base for railway freight carriage, the harmonization of positions on entry into WTO, the fundamentals of border policy. The Presidents of the five states adopted a budget message defining the basic directions of work in the budget and economic policy. Apart from that, they endorsed a plan of cooperation in the sphere of banking regulation and supervision until 2006. All these decisions and documents are aimed at intensifying integration in the real sector of the economy, bringing the peoples of EurAsEC member states closer to each other and raising their living standards.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin considers EurAsEC as the locomotive of integration processes in the post-Soviet space in the economic sphere. "The latest events, including within the framework of the single economic space, have been largely provoked, in the good sense of this word, by the processes going on within the EurAsEC," the Russian President told a joint press conference in Astana. In the opinion of Vladimir Putin, over the years of its existence, EurAsEC has been able to become a real instrument of integration. According to him, this can be evidenced by the results of the summit: the summit-approved documents and, in particular, the document on the status of economic legislation, which implies the adoption of supra-national "direct-effect" legislative acts, the agreement to coordinate their activities for admission to WTO.
Ten years ago, incumbent President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev came up with the initiative to create the EurAsEC. In his opinion, the integration projects within the CIS, namely the EurAsEC and the Single Economic Space, do not at all contradict each other. According to him, the development of the EurAsEC and the Single Economic Space "organically fits into the thesis about the multi-level and multi-speed integration within the CIS." "Both of these integration associations are going their own way. EurAsEC is a viable and developing organization of the cooperation of the Eurasian five states. "Already today the EurAsEC member states account for over 80% of foreign trade operations within the CIS, and these countries have agreed upon over 60% of customs tariff rates," the President of Kazakhstan said. He stressed that the work over the formation of the Single Economic Space began with the determination of the prospects of joint economic development. "This is very important," said Nursultan Nazarbayev, adding that today the countries - parties to the Single Economic Space were working out over a hundred agreements and accords in various sectors of the economy.
The Single Economic Space is formed by Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine. Meanwhile, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia are also parties to the EurAsEC.
In one of his recent articles president of the Politika Foundation Vyacheslav Nikonov writes that "the diplomatic activity of the past week underlined Moscow's visibly growing interest in the acceleration of efforts to create a single economic space within the CIS. This was clearly seen in Astana during the meeting of the EurAsEC Inter-State Council where Russia and Kazakhstan, the main motors of the post-Soviet integration, played the first role. At the same time, this was even more explicit in St. Petersburg where Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov met with his Ukrainian colleague Viktor Yanukovich. Russia met Kiev halfway on the issue that was extremely important for Ukraine: it agreed to switch to the principle of charging the value-added tax in the country of destination. The price of the issue is $800 million of losses for the Russian budget. However, it is impossible to build differently normal relations with Ukraine because Russia applies the principle of charging VAT in the country of consumption in its trade with both Western countries and the EurAsEC member states (and Ukraine is not an EurAsEC member). Russia's readiness to pay and sacrifice something is a convincing proof of its serious intentions. |
