Declaration of intent remains in force

By Vladimir Ivanov

The position of the Belarusian side on the necessity of the elimination of all withdrawals and restrictions for the future Eurasian Economic Union is unchangeable. The President focused attention on this issue while receiving the Prime Minister, Mikhail Myasnikovich, with a report following the results of the Moscow meeting of the Heads of Governments of the troika.

The forthcoming meeting of Heads of State on April 29th in Minsk should become a fundamental activity that will dot the i’s and cross the t’s and not just bet a symbol of the next stage of Eurasian integration. According to Alexander Lukashenko, “Later there will not be enough time for the completion and actually signing of the agreement about the economic union”. Regarding this, the President was interested in the position of the partners; firstly, the Russian Federation and how they perceived the quite logical and well-founded offers from the Belarusian side?

“If we build the union and aspire to that, there will be no borders here. This means that there should be no withdrawals and restrictions on the movement of goods, labour, and capital,” Alexander Lukashenko noted. “It is the main objective and we proceed from this.”

The President categorically denied various insinuations on the given theme, which are periodically emerging in some mass media and in certain political circles abroad, “Of course there are a lot of speculations on this topic, as if we pursue our own aims. As if we should pursue the aims of the European Union or the USA. We completely agree with those aims which were declared, and we do not intend to recede from them. We also lose much, in comparison with Russia we are a small country. And we understand what it could cost us. But nevertheless we have decided, and we will work in this direction.”