ST. PETERSBURG, June 20 (Itar-Tass) - There are no plans to build any political structures within the Eurasian Economic Union, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said on Thursday at a roundtable meeting within the framework of the Petersburg International Economic Forum.
“We are not planning to create anything of the sort, what our partners fear,” he said and stressed that Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan “are building no political integration.”
According to Shuvalov, there certainly are people in these three countries who would like to see a kind of “political superstructure” in the new association. But such issues have never been even addressed by the leaders of the three countries, their governments and experts. “It is a tabooed issue. No one wants to send signals that we are ready to form any kind of political supra-national institution. It is outside a priority list, it is not even a minor-importance issue. These questions are outside our agenda,” he stressed.
International worries over the would-be Eurasian Economic Union, in his words, are rooted in the fact that “it is going to be a very strong economic player.”