Interfax: Ukraine will have no political weight in association with EU – Kremlin advisor

KHARKIV. Nov 1 (Interfax) – Ukraine will have no political clout in the association with the European Union, while the Eurasian Economic Union guarantees absolute equality of its members, says Russian presidential adviser Sergei Glazyev.

“Our Customs Union is being set up according to the same rules as the European Union,” Glazyev said. “Both they and we work in compliance with the WTO rules, and our integration scenarios have a lot in common, but there is one significant difference. The Eurasian Economic Union, which is currently being built within the framework of the Customs Union and the Unified Economic Area, guarantees absolute equality of the parties. All participants in the process have the same number of representatives in the Eurasian Economic Commission’s board and council, each state in fact has a veto right, and all decisions are made through a consensus. This is significantly different from what is being offered to Ukraine under the association agreement with the European Union, in which Ukraine has no right to vote at all. Ukraine’s political weight in this organization is equal to zero,” Glazyev said at an international conference dealing with economic and legal consequences of an association agreement with the EU for Ukraine’s industry in Kharkiv on Friday.

If Ukraine signs an association agreement with the EU, this will complicate its interaction with Russia, Glazyev said.

“An association council will appear between us and Ukraine. That is, we will work not directly but through the association council, in which the Europeans have half of the votes and each our movement will be assessed by the European Union, which will so have a right to veto any regulative decision concerning our trade and economic relations,” he said.

Glazyev said he would not like to over-dramatize the situation. “We should avoid words like ‘trade war’, ‘close the markets’, or ‘sever the ties’. Surely, our ties will be kept, they have been kept for centuries and will be kept, but the conditions of these ties, their efficiency, intensity and essence depend very much on the trade-economic regime and the presence or absence of borders,” he said.