Ukraine’s joining Customs Union may promote free trade zone agrt with EU
"We have demonstrated how this format of the Customs Union can help our state and Ukraine in case it finds it possible to join the Customs Union, how all this can facilitate the soonest and more successful formation of a free trade zone with the European Union," Shuvalov said after talks with Ukraine's First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Klyuev and Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov. "Ukraine's possible membership in the Customs Union might, at a certain stage, speed up the process of forming the free trade zone with the EU."
The Common Economic Space and the Customs Union between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus seek to sign a free trade zone agreement [with the European Union] but only when and where it is of mutual benefit: it should be beneficial for the European Union, and it should be beneficial for the Customs Union member states," Shuvalov stressed. "We confirm that a free trade zone in the post-Soviet territory embracing CIS states is an economically important project."
"We proceed from the fact that these formats do not contradict one another," he went on. "The Customs Union is an intermediary stage on the way of forming a common economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific," Kazinform cites Itar-Tass.
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