“Kazakhstan does not intend to create or join any allied state.” Ruslan Zeldibai, press secretary of the president, said this on May 26, when the relations between the country and the EAEU are being hotly discussed in the society of Kazakhstan.
“Integration within the EAEU should be of an economic nature only. This is the main position of the President. Deviating from it contradicts the goals, principles and tasks of the organization’s charter documents,” wrote the press secretary of the President.
Zeldibai emphasized the “importance of economic integration for the people” and repeated President Tokayev’s speech in Moscow that “the two EAEU members – Russia and Belarus have reached a high level of mutual integration.”
“At the same time, it is very important to distinguish between initiatives within the framework of two different integration projects with completely different goals. As for our country, Kazakhstan does not intend to create any allied states or join them and does not plan to do so,” Zeldibay said.
Speaking at the Eurasian Economic Forum in Moscow on May 24, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev compared the relations between Russia and Belarus and other EAEU member countries .
“There is a conceptual reality or exception that we should take into account. This is the union of Russia and Belarus within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union. That is, a unique phenomenon has appeared in the history of world politics – the political, legislative, military, economic, monetary, cultural, humanitarian space of one, unified union government and A state with a single union parliament was created according to the formula “Two countries – one state”. I’m sorry, even now they both have nuclear weapons in common,” said Tokayev.
His speech was hotly discussed online. Some experts have criticized that even though Kazakhstan is losing from “partnership” in EAEU, it is not abandoning it. According to political scientist Dosym Satpayev, President Tokayev did not want to show the national interest with this speech, on the contrary, he proposed to create a new game rule in the economy, taking into account the union of the two countries.
– Tokayev’s words seemed to be half heavy. It seemed that something would happen, but before taking two steps, they said that they would work within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union. However, it seems that we need to define new rules of the game. That is, Russia and Belarus share the same economic space, common customs and taxes. Now how should this look like in the union? If a player emerges, the other countries in the union will have a small stake. For example, Russia already brought a large part of the customs duty. Russia and Belarus will benefit even more if they unite. That is, the problem here was only of an economic nature, – said Dosym Satpaev.
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are members of the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union. The member countries of the Union have agreed on mutual trade freedom. In practice, Russia has turned the EAEU countries into a market for its products. Kyrgyzstan often talks about obstacles in the EAEU internal market.
Source : Azzatyq