Nazarbayev calls for EAEU's full-scale economic cooperation with EU, SCO, ASEAN
NUR-SULTAN. May 29 (Interfax) - First Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has urged the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) member states (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, and Armenia) to build full-scale economic cooperation with the European Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and ASEAN.
"I'd like to put forward some proposals, first of all, a broader strategic contour of the EAEU and enhancement of the integration idea. We should establish full-scale economic cooperation between the EAEU, the EU, the SCO, and, probably, ASEAN," Nazarbayev said at a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Nur-Sultan on Wednesday.
Following swift development over its first five years, the union is entering a more complex, slow period of evolution, Nazarbayev said.
"It is necessary to create a new vision of our development," he said.
Nazarbayev called for elaborating a new strategy, which the EAEU will be pursuing on global markets against the backdrop of sanctions and trade wars.
"We need a new strategy to win markets amid trade wars. For instance, temporary sanctions have created a gap between goods supplied by the United States to China and by China to the United States," Nazarbayev said.
"Why not study and occupy this niche to offer our goods? We can use the situation to our advantage. I suggest that we elaborate a roadmap for the period until 2025 with due account of these initiatives," he said.