Member states of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) have a long way to go before introducing a common currency suggested by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a senior official from the Russian-led bloc’s executive body said on Monday.
Putin publicly floated the idea of such a currency union at a March 20 meeting in Kazakhstan with his Kazakh and Belarusian counterparts. Earlier this month, he instructed the Russian Central Bank to look into the possibility of a single EEU currency.
Presidents Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus did not respond to Putin’s statement in public. Both men have been lukewarm about the idea. Armenian officials have also reacted cautiously to Putin’s apparent desire to turn the EEU into a more tightly-knit alliance.
Tatyana Valovaya, a member of the EEU’s Moscow-based executive Eurasian Economic Commission, similarly sounded a cautious note over the currency union as she attended an economic conference in Yerevan.
“There need to be conditions for the emergence of a single currency,” she told reporters. “Before we can switch to a currency union we would have to build an economic union.”
Valovaya argued that the European Union needed decades to introduce in 2002 the euro, the single currency of most of its member states. She would not be drawn on when the EEU member states might be prepared to do the same.
Putin’s proposal has raised more fears among Armenian opponents of Armenia’s recent accession to the EEU. They believe that EEU membership poses a serious threat to the country’s independence and offers it few economic benefits. The Armenian government has dismissed these claims.