Vladimir Putin’s address:
Ladies and gentlemen, today we will discuss a number of issues related to the work of the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.
The Customs Union (and, specifically, the common customs tariff) has been in effect since January 1 of this year. In July, the union’s Customs Code came into force. Customs clearance requirements have been scrapped on the Russian-Belarusian border and, partially, on the Russian-Kazakh border. The remaining customs barriers should be eliminated by July 2011.
We’ve already seen some early results, and I think everyone would agree that they are mainly positive. Of course, some minor errors and lapses have been made along the way, but this is inevitable given the scale of the project. By and large, however, we’ve been able to do a systemic reconfiguration, assuming some fundamentally different forms of cooperation.
The Customs Union Commission is operating in an efficient and well-coordinated manner. I’d like to use this occasion to thank all my colleagues for making a significant contribution to this common cause.
The main thing is that the business community and investors, including foreign ones, now have the sense that the Customs Union has become a reality. They’ve come to believe in its potential, and they are creating their development plans around the new opportunities that it offers for integration.
Today we will make a number of important decisions that will enable us to make progress towards shaping an adequate regulatory framework for the Customs Union.
Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve now come close to creating a common economic space. I’d like to talk in detail about some of the aspects of that work. We discussed some key issues at an emergency meeting on October 15. All the participants came to the discussion with a productive, professional attitude. We then managed to reconcile all the conceptual discrepancies and reached compromises on the most complicated issues, notably ones related to energy and railways.
As a result of that work, we have several documents ready to sign today, which are part of a larger package on the creation of a common economic space. A few other documents are almost ready to be signed. They will probably be signed at the same time as the presidential summit on December 9 of this year.
I’m sure we’ll have the entire package finalised precisely by that date. This is exactly what we, for our part, are determined to do.
Of course, the success in this will depend on the concerted efforts of all the three sides involved. The main thing here will be to stick to the compromises we’ve reached through hard work. This is a principle Russia is trying to follow.
The agreements of October 15 provide a necessary equilibrium between the interests of the three countries in key economic sectors.
We’ve developed a fast enough pace, especially considering the scale and the ambitiousness of the objectives we’ve given ourselves. It’s important not to lose momentum further down the road, but to consistently move toward the goals set, and I expect that our talks today will help us get much closer to them.
I know that progress doesn’t come easily and that our experts and deputies have worked very hard on this. Indeed, this is a project that requires hours of serious, concentrated work. Its results will define the development of our national economies while also influencing the living standards of people in each of our countries.
We’ve spent a lot of time considering different ways of achieving integration in the post-Soviet era. Now, finally, we’re set to make the most of all the competitive advantages we’ve inherited from the Soviet era. There were many elements that enabled us to be competitive on world markets in the past and that paved the way for major transformations during the transition to a market-oriented economy.
I appreciate your attention.
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Vladimir Putin, Sergei Sidorsky and Karim Massimov sign a number of agreements on the establishment of the Common Economic Space between Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia.
The documents signed include:
- agreement on a coordinated macroeconomic policy
- agreement on unified competition principles and regulations
- agreement on cooperation in the fight against illegal labour immigration from third countries
- agreement on the legal status of immigrant workers and their families
- agreement on access to the services of power generating monopolies, including the fundamentals of pricing and tariff policy.