On 4 December, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced his country's priorities within the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) at the organisation’s intergovernmental council.
He said that the formation of common markets for oil, oil products and gas within the EAEU is necessary. According to the PM, the adoption of an international treaty on the common gas market of the EAEU will be very important in this regard, which requires the implementation of common approaches to pricing in the common gas market of the EAEU, including uniform tariffs for services rendered by the entity of natural monopolies during transportation and gas transit.
It should be noted that in May this year, Armenia and Belarus said the gas price was significantly lower for consumers in Russia than in the other EAEU Member States and insisted that Moscow agrees to uniform EAEU energy tariffs. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin rejected this proposal implying that Yerevan and Minsk should agree first to even deeper economic integration with Moscow which would result in a “single budget and system of taxation” for all EAEU member states. Armenia’s Vice Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan said that his country was not prepared for such integration.
The Armenian Prime Minister also called for an immediate revision of the list of countries which enjoy the unified system of tariff preferences with the EAEU. He stressed that Armenia attaches importance to the issue of granting tariff preferences for goods and services from developing and least developed countries. The issue of passenger transportation and the entry of citizens was also dubbed by Pashinyan as a “sensitive” topic.
When speaking about the project on strategic directions for the development of Eurasian integration until 2025, Pashinyan emphasised that the project needs to be implemented on a full scale. He noted that the mentioned mechanisms for creating common markets without barriers, exemptions and restrictions are an important factor in the practical achievement of 4 freedoms. He also said that increasing the level of cooperation and competitiveness of the national economies of the EAEU countries is of major importance. Pashinyan mentioned the creation of a construction sector single market and stressed that the approval of an action plan in this area is an important step.
