On February 12, 2020 FBA EAC headquarters hosted a business meeting between Association management and the representatives of German business. The meeting participants from the German side were Ulf Shneider, CEO-President of “SCHNEIDER GROUP” and Miriam Danne, Senior Project Manager to CEO & President, “SCHNEIDER GROUP”. The Association was represented by Alexander Murychev, Chairman of Coordinating Council, Oleg Berezovoy, General Director and Vladimir Kotenev, Head of FBA EAC Representative office in Germany.

The parties discussed a number of topics of mutual interest, first of all the initiative of Mr. Shneider “Single economic space from Lisbon to Vladivostok” aimed to develop cooperation between EU and EAEU for the benefit of business communities of both unions. Mr. Shneider said that in order to develop this initiative with the support of Russian-German Foreign Trade Chamber, German business and public organizations a Work Group was created comprising the leaders of more than 40 large European and Russian companies and business associations. The Work Group promoted an open dialogue between the EU and EAEU and is neutral platform of business diplomacy for cooperation and opinion exchange between the representatives of EEC and the European Commission as well as national agencies of state-members of both unions. He also pointed out that on November 29, 2017 German companies signed a Memorandum “Single economic space from Lisbon to Vladivostok” prepared by the Work Group. This Memorandum encourages to ramp up business-dialogue on the Eurasian space. Today the Memorandum unites about 80 companies and associations. Mr. Shneider also expressed interest to include FBA EAC into the Memorandum.

After that the parties discussed the issues of mutual cooperation to promote the initiative of single economic space in form of agreements on free trade between the EU and the EAEU, customs and technical regulations harmonization, liberalization of visa regime for all countries of the economic union.

As a result of the meeting it was decided that FBA EAC joins the Memorandum “Single economic space from Lisbon to Vladivostok” expected to be signed at the General Meeting of Association Members on March 6, 2020.

  Ulf Shneider and Alexander Murychev