Kremlin welcomes Kyrgyzstan accession to Eurasia union

MOSCOW, May 21. /TASS/. The Kremlin on Thursday welcomed Kyrgyzstan joining the Eurasian Economic Union, the new Russia-led political and economic bloc formed with Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia. "Certainly, we welcome Kyrgyzstan’s accession to the Eurasian Economic Union and integration processes which are gathering pace," Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, told reporters. He noted that today’s integration processes "are complex but at the same time these processes have no alternative in the current economic situation and serve the interests of all states involved in these processes". Kyrgyzstan’s President Almazbek Atambayev on Thursday signed a law on the republic’s accession to the union. The legislation, approved by the parliament on Wednesday, entered into force on Thursday. "Accession to the Eurasian Economic Union will give our goods open access to an almost $200 million market of the union’s member states," Atambayev said during a signing ceremony. "We will stop being a speculative economy and will start to develop dynamically." Economy Minister Oleg Pankratov said on Wednesday after the Kyrgyz parliament had ratified the treaty that the document would still need to be ratified by the parliaments of the other member states, before the Central Asian nation could open its borders to them. He said the Kyrgyz side wanted to ask its union partners to accelerate the ratification procedure and not to postpone the issue until the autumn. Kyrgyz authorities decided to join the Moscow-led Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan in the spring of 2011. Six months later, the former Soviet republic filed an official request. A treaty on the republic’s accession to the Customs Union and the newly-formalised Eurasian Economic Union was signed in December. The Eurasian Economic Union, which envisages free movement of goods, services, capital and labour and is based on the Customs Union, started operating in January, replacing the Eurasian Economic Community, which officially ceased to exist last October. Membership is open to other states assessed as sharing the assembly's aims and principles, its founders say. Read more