Armenia will become a full member of the the Eurasian Economic Union on January 1, 2015, Tengrinews reports citing NEWS.am.
Armenia will become a full member of the the Eurasian Economic Union on January 1, 2015, Tengrinews reports citing NEWS.am.
Prime Minister of Armenia Hovik Abrahamyan announced this on Tuesday, July 22. He added that the agreement on Armenia's accession into the EEU would be signed in October this year.
The Prime Minister emphasized that the delay in signing of the documents on Armenia's accession had nothing to do with the demand to set up customs checkpoints on the border between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnically dominated Armenian enclave within the Azerbaijani territory. He assured that this delay was due to organizational reasons only, not geopolitical or political ones. The same view was expressed earlier by Sergey Minasyan, Deputy Director of the Caucasus Institute.
Hovik Abrahamyan also highlighted that his visit to Sochi, Russia last week and his meeting with Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev had nothing to do with Armenia’s accession process. The main goal of his visit was to meet with the Russian-Armenian businessmen and discuss investments opportunities offered by Armenia.
Kazakhstan's Foreign Minister Yerlan Idrissov also said that the agreement on Armenia's accession into the EEU would most likely be signed in October 2014 at the meeting of the EEU member-countries' presidents in Minsk, Belarus.
Signing of the documents for Armenia's accession into the Eurasian Economic Union was initially scheduled for July 1, 2014.
The EEU is an economic union created on 29 May 2014 by the treaty signed by the leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia that will come into effect on January 1, 2015. The union establishes a framework for a comprehensive integration of its member-states and creates a single market of 171 million people and with the cumulative GDP of 3 trillion dollars.
Writing by Assel Satubaldina, editing by Tatyana Kuzmina