Russian Deputy Prime Minister proposes Egypt resume free trade talks with EAEU

CAIRO. Sept 17 (Interfax) - Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) countries and Egypt need to look at why their negotiations on a free trade zone stopped and resume talks on this issue, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk said at a Russian-Egyptian conference in Cairo on Tuesday.

"We propose to return to the issue of an agreement on a free trade zone between the Eurasian Economic Union and the Arab Republic of Egypt. Negotiations were being held. We need to see what happened to them and what we need to do together here in order to remove barriers in our mutual trade as much as possible and make, create genuinely comfortable conditions for business," Overchuk said.

Earlier on Tuesday Overchuk met with Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, Deputy Prime Minister for industrial development and Industry and Transport Minister Kamel Al-Wazir and Investment and Foreign Trade Minister Hassan El-Khatib.

The Supreme Eurasian Economic Council approved holding negotiations on creating a free trade zone with Egypt back in 2016 and the first round of talks was held at the start of 2019.

Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) Trade Minister Andrei Slepnev said at the end of 2023 that the agreement with Egypt was ambitious, as it was supposed to reduce duties to zero for more than 95% of exports to the country. But no significant progress in the free trade talks was reported in 2024-2025. Six rounds of negotiations had been held as of the end of 2024, the EEC said.