EAEU sees broader cooperation with SCO as key goal - EEC Board chairman

MINSK. March 29 (Interfax) - The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) considers broader cooperation with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a crucial avenue of its activities, Eurasian Economic Commission Board Chairman Bakytzhan Sagintayev said.

"Broader cooperation with the SCO is a key avenue for us. The EAEU and the SCO have set up an institutional basis for interaction, signed a memorandum, and are finalizing a plan of events for 2024-2025 towards implementing the memorandum, and its regulating bodies have arranged a systemic dialogue," Belarus's BelTA state news agency quoted Sagintayev as saying while opening a CIS international economic forum in Moscow.

The EAEU is interacting with SCO countries not so much in a dialogue format as primarily in the form of trade agreements, Sagintayev said. "For instance, the EAEU and its member states have concluded a trade and economic cooperation agreement with China. A free trade agreement has been signed with Iran," Sagintayev said.

The EAEU is consistently building infrastructure for a dialogue with key players in the Greater Eurasian area, he said.

"The development of a systemic dialogue with the SCO, ASEAN, BRICS countries, and other countries and associations concerned in the context of greater Eurasian partnership is among the priorities of the union's international affairs as stipulated in its principal strategic high-level documents," he said.