The Tribuna program’s guest is Igor Morozov, a senator of the Ryazan Region, a member of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs. He discusses the international agenda with Vladimir Nesterov. See Part 1 Igor Morozov: “There is a passionate surge in the Southern and Eastern European countries”
- What are prospects for the expansion of the Eurasian Economic Union?
- The Customs Union has shown the three most developed economies (Russian, Belarus, Kazakhstan – editor’s note) in the post-Soviet space that the potential of synergies and cooperation is huge. In 2011 we summed up the first results of the Customs Union. The internal trade turnover grew by 43%, which is a huge leap forward. And the external contour turnover increased by 28-29%. This showed us that we need to promote the integration process further. So in 2012 the Common Economic Space was created. The Eurasian Economic Union was the next stage of integration, in which we had a single market of medicines, energy and transport services. We gradually come to the Monetary Union.
Today we don’t speak about a common currency, but a monetary union implies the intensification of a national currency conversion of all settlements and access to foreign markets. I think that by 2020 we will reach a new stage of integration. Look how attractive our free-trade zone became. If in 2012 all CIS countries, including Ukraine, signed an agreement on free trade zone, which gave very big preferences, both in the labor force, migrant workers and in the removal of duties, in the food market, the market of the textile industry. The CIS free trade zone arouses a lot of interest from other countries on different continents – Turkey, Vietnam, there is a road map developing with New Zealand and Pakistan. And I think that many countries will enter a free trade zone as the first stage of the integration processes to become our partners in the EAEU.
So we have great prospects. We are working on algorithms, we look at the European Union to avoid the mistakes that our partners in Europe made. And here we go slightly sequentially, gaining momentum, so the participation of the EAEU in the inter-regional cooperation within the framework of integration groupings is a completely objective process, it is the next. The EAEU – the BRICS, the EAEU – the SCO.
- In summer, summits of the SCO and BRICS were held in Ufa. What are the prospects of these organizations?
- We are expanding the market and the free trade zone. BRICS is a very serious new organizational form of integration group on a transcontinental scale. And I am very closely monitoring how the Americans are negotiating with the European Union and Japan and Canada on a transatlantic partnership for trade and investment, and compare it with the BRICS. I think that we are ahead of the partnership that is now being created by the Americans. We have a thorough understanding among our partners. We have created the new Development Bank of BRICS. An agreement was signed by central banks to start work on conditional pooling of foreign exchange reserves, which is essential in times of crisis and external pressure for all five BRICS countries. The controlling authorities of the banks have already been assigned. The BRICS Development Bank signed an agreement with the Asian infrastructure investment banks, the initiator of which was China, and now there are 18 countries. We are the third. There's also the British, the Germans are now entering, the French. That means new development institutions are being developed in Asia.
The geopolitical center of the decision-making and in general development is shifting from Europe to Asia. And nobody wants to be left behind. Therefore, the Americans also plan to create a new transcontinental space, the Asia-Pacific Partnership, excluding China, Russia and the countries that are part of the BRICS.
The geopolitical confrontation is now being created to split the world into new poles. I think this is a major challenge and a threat to the development of civilization. I think that the Americans are now consciously leading a destructive foreign policy, in order not to give up the opportunity to exploit new countries, new groups, in order not to lose their leadership.
However, there are new centers in the world: Russia, China, India, Latin America; not only Brazil and Argentina, Ecuador, but also other countries are rising against US domination. Not so long ago we (a group of senators – editor’s note) returned from Ecuador. When [the Speaker of the Federation Council] Valentina Matviyenko put forward the idea of a multipolar world, the hall applauded, and then the entire agenda shifted from this point of view, and everyone was talking only about the dominance of the dollar, that it's time to stop this, talking about the need to reform the IMF, the World Bank, the UN, a multipolar world, and Russia.
- In our program, there is a regular column 'From Kamchatka Territory to the Kaliningrad Region', in which we ask our guests about tourist attractiveness of the region they represent. What do tourists need to visit in the Ryazan region?
- The Ryazan Region has an incredible advantage over many regions, because it is located in the south of the Moscow region. That is, we are just two hours away from Moscow. We have a lot of flowing rivers of Central Russia, particularly at this time. This is a tourist route that has always, both in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, been extremely interesting, because the Oka River passes through 8 regions of the Central Federal District and flows through the Nizhny Novgorod region. The tourist route passes by Konstantinovo, the place where Yesenin was born. The Konstantinovsky Heights, from which Yesenin looked at the meadows and wrote poetry, not to write poetry there is simply impossible. It's just the region of the birch calico, as Yesenin wrote. Well, of course, Ryazan, the Ryazan land is ancient. Once it was the Ryazan principality in Russia, which was then a wild pitch. Therefore, we know from history that the Ryazan region took the very first blows of the nomadic peoples: the Pechenegs, the Polovtsians, the Kopchaks and others. Well, in 1237, we, in general, took the first blow of the Mongol hordes, so Ryazan was destroyed. And later it was destroyed, if you read our history, these are very serious sources by Solovyov, Karamzin, Gumilyov. 17 times Ryazan was razed to the ground. Therefore, a subsequent decision was made to move Ryazan to Pereyaslavl, but it is a new, modern Ryazan, which is the regional administrative center. And the old Ryazan, my homeland, where I lived, where I was born, where I grew up, it's just the earth, which is a holy place for us, we worship the cross, which is there, excavations are carried out there, they are preserved, very well preserved, and we are trying to maintain them. There are shafts that existed just before the period of the city of Ryazan, and I think that we have a huge number of historical sites which can attract tourist groups, organize horse riding.
- Do you have necessary tourist infrastructure?
- Our business is building such a good enough tourism industry, and we have the mountain slopes, we have a water park, we have built a yacht club. Our Solodchaya region motels are very good on a modern, high-tech fitness level. We are ready to accept everyone, come to us in Ryazan, the Ryazan Region, we want to be a tourist region.
