"Editors' Club" - about the CIS: any association that includes Belarus demonstrates its effectiveness

Any association to which Belarus is a full member or observer or dialogue partner demonstrates its effectiveness. This conclusion was reached by experts on the program “Editors Club” on the TV channel “Belarus 1”, writes sb.by.

Turkmenistan hosted the summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which this year celebrates its 35th anniversary. The event was attended by President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.

- Detractors predicted death to the Commonwealth, but it is alive, and in many ways this is the merit of our Head of State, said Ivan Eismont, the host of the program, chairman of the Belteleradiocompany. He is practically the only person who throughout the entire existence of the CIS explained to the leaders of different countries that the Commonwealth should exist.

In the context of the summit, Vadim Elfimov, Head of the Department of Social Policy and Ideology of the Academy of Management under the President of the Republic of Belarus, drew attention to the adopted declaration, stressing that, unfortunately, it is not a binding document:

- This is the Achilles heel of the CIS: the decisions taken are advisory, not mandatory. Alexander Lukashenko proposes to increase the efficiency of the Commonwealth, he constantly reminds about it. Efficiency can only be improved when we follow our own decisions. I can say that in every speech of our President at the CIS summits, such a phrase is mandatory in one interpretation or another.

Andrey Krivosheev, Chairman of the Belarusian Union of Journalists, General Director of the Minsk-Novosti Agency, drew attention to the strengths of the CIS:

Any association to which Belarus is a full member, observer or dialogue partner demonstrates its effectiveness. This is the logic and political will of our President in any integration process. The CIS has many useful functions that it performs. One of them is the CIS free trade zone. This is the admission of goods, services and labor into our common market. In addition to the economy, the CIS has a large layer that directly affects the interests of citizens. For example, social security guarantees. I have seen about one and a half thousand intergovernmental agreements concluded on the CIS platform, which concern all countries. This includes agreements on the prevention of emergency disasters, accidents, work of meteorological services, logistics, air traffic. And all of them make life in the CIS space comfortable.