MOSCOW: Kremlin is going to assist Belarus’ customs border with financial aid in current year 2015, the move most consider as an attempt to take over Belarus border control.
Belarus is ready to make some concessions to the Kremlin – such as accepting payments in Russian rubles for Russian energy. In the medium term, however, she has no plans either to delegate the authority to control Belarus’ western borders to supranational bodies, or to endorse the introduction of the single currency in the Eurasian Economic Union.
A Meeting of presidents of Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan in Astana, which was planned for last week, had been postponed. Reuters quoted a source in the Kazakh government as saying that “the visit was cancelled, apparently Putin has been taken ill”. At the trilateral meeting in Astana, the presidents planned to discuss trilateral trade and economic cooperation issues, current trends in the global economy, as well as the situation in Ukraine. Interestingly, the president of Armenia, the EAEC Member State as of January 2nd, 2015, was not reported to participate in the meeting.
The Kremlin counts on dictating terms for Belarus to delegate some national authority in customs control to supranational bodies – de facto to Moscow. Formally, Russia has justified her requirements by referring to insufficient control by Belarus over her border with the EU and allowing food imports to Russia regardless of the Russian food embargo. The Russian Food Administration Agency has toughened control over food originating or transiting through Belarus. The RFAA reported that since early 2015 the volume of smuggled foodstuffs to Russia via Belarus had doubled compared with 2014. The RFAA also proposed to examine farms in Belarus producing beets, carrots, apples and milk, as well as food suppliers, which had fallen under suspicion for re-exporting food from the EU.
Belarus’ Agriculture Ministry has once again rejected the Russian authorities’ proposal to organise a joint monitoring of the Belarus-EU border and proposed to organise a joint monitoring of all borders of the Customs Union, including Russian and Kazah sites. In addition, a member of the board for Customs Cooperation at the Eurasian Economic Commission Mr Goshin said that a single system of electronic document circulation in the customs sphere of the EAEC would be introduced by 2021.
Meanwhile, at a recent Supreme Council of the Unions State of Belarus and Russia meeting, presidents Putin and Lukashenko signed the inter-governmental agreement on the exchange of data regarding entry and exit bans issued by both countries. In addition, President Putin underscored that there was an agreement “to continue to work on the common visa space”. The Belarusian president, however, gave no encouragement to this initiative by his Russian counterpart.
