October 7 (SeeNews) - Serbia's future free trade agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) will expire before the country joins the European Union (EU), trade minister Rasim Ljajic has said.
The free trade agreement will open the access to a market of 180 million people and will expire six months before Serbia joins the EU, Ljajic said on Saturday, according to a Serbian government press release.
In August, Russia's ambassador to Serbia Aleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko said that the EAEU expects to sign a free trade agreement with Serbia on October 25 - a step that may make Belgrade one of the links in trade between the EU and the EAEU.
The move drew criticism from Brussels, as in the context of its accession negotiations, Serbia has committed to withdrawing from all bilateral free-trade agreements on the day of its accession to the bloc.
"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," David McAllister, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, said in August.
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.