Customs Union, CES to become basis for Eurasian Union - Putin

The Customs Union and the Common Economic Space, created by Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan will become the basis for setting up the Eurasian Union, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wrote in an article published by the Izvestia daily on Tuesday.

"The construction of the Customs Union and the Common Economic Space creates a foundation for setting up in the future a Eurasian economic union. At the same time, the circle of participants in the Customs Union and the CES will be gradually expanding through a full involvement in their work of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan," the prime minister said, Itar-Tass reported.

"We don't stop at this and we set ourselves an ambitious task of getting to a next, higher level of integration - the Eurasian Union," Putin stated. According to him, this does not mean a reconstruction of the former USSR in this or that shape.

"It is nave to try to restore or copy what is already in the past, but close integration on a new political and economic basis is the call of the times," Prime Minister Putin noted.

"We are offering the model of a powerful supra-national union, capable to become one of the poles of the modern world and at that - play the role of an efficient link between Europe and the dynamic Asian Pacific region.

This also means that on the basis of the Customs Union and the CES it is necessary to proceed to closer coordination of the economic and currency policy, create a full-value economic union," he explained.

Putin is confident that "the addition of natural resources, capitals, a strong human potential will let the Eurasian Union be competitive in an industrial and technological race, in a competition for investors, for the creation of new jobs and advanced productions, and ensure stability of global development along with other key players and regional agencies, such as the European Union, the USA, China, APEC".