August 29 (SeeNews) - A member of the European Parliament has said that Serbia will need to withdraw from its potential free trade agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) before joining the European Union (EU), news portal EU Observer quoted
"The text of the free trade agreement should include an exit clause, which guarantees that Serbia can retract the agreement by the date of its final accession to the EU," EU Observer quoted David McAllister, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, as saying on Tuesday.
Earlier this month, the Russian ambassador to Serbia, Aleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko, said that the EAEU expects to sign a free trade agreement with Serbia on October 25, which may make Belgrade one of the links in trade between the EU and the EAEU.
However, in the context of its EU accession negotiations, Serbia has committed to withdrawing from all bilateral free-trade agreements on the day of its accession to the bloc, EU Observer quoted a spokesperson for the European Commission as saying.
The EAEU is a political and economic union of several states in central and northern Eurasia that once were members of the former Soviet Union - Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. Serbia already has free trade agreements with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.