Andreichenko: Belarus-Russia integration in Union State has gained a lot of steam

“The Union State integration is on a roll. The presidents and governments of Belarus and Russia are successfully resolving all issues to keep the economy and households shielded from the impact of sanctions,” Vladimir Andreichenko said.

He illustrated his point with some trade statistics. “In January-June of this year, the trade between Belarus and Russia amounted to $23.5 billion, up by $3.5 billion over January-June 2022. I think this is quite an achievement,” the speaker stated.

“This year alone, Belarus has hosted 25 delegations of Russian regions headed by their heads, 46 official delegations that included representatives of the business community, 30 meetings of bilateral working groups. We believe that we need to keep it up, since it is interaction on a horizontal level that can give the most appreciable results. Such meetings allow us to identify what concerns people the most, what problems need to be addressed and what else needs to be done to remove the remaining barriers in our integration,” Vladimir Andreichenko emphasized.

According to him, closer inter-regional and cross-border cooperation plays a key role in the formation of a single economic space. “We need to make the most of it so that economic entities of Belarus and Russia will feel like there are no borders or distances between them,” said the chairman of the House of Representatives. “It is necessary to strengthen the role of regional authorities in the development and implementation of the Union State programs and projects. In this regard, in our opinion, the removal of legal restrictions on the participation of regional authorities of Belarus and Russia as state customers in the Union State programs and projects could give an additional impetus to inter-regional and cross-border cooperation within the framework of the Union State and facilitate the development of new programs and projects. I think this issue should be discussed today,” Vladimir Andreichenko said.

“Projects aimed at preservation of common historical memory, patriotic education of young people, development of transport infrastructure between regions, tourism, education, and culture have great prospects. The most relevant form of cooperation today is personnel training: it is necessary to come up with common programs and approaches to personnel training in the most in-demand fields of expertise, as it will help prevent employee poaching,” Vladimir Andreichenko added.