Welcome Address by the General Secretary of the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC) Grigoriy Rapota at the Third Eurasian Media Forum April 22, 2004

Your Excellency!
Dear Forum organizers and participants!

Let me welcome you on behalf of the international economic organization, which I have an honor to represent here. It is noteworthy that its name - Eurasian Economic Community - is consonant with the name of the Eurasian Media Forum. The issue of Eurasianship - as a set of views on human history, as a characteristic of the people inhabiting Eurasian continent, and as a sphere of economic interaction - has long been a subject of research for historians, journalists, and politicians.

The development of the issue was given renewed impetus 10 years ago, when in his speech at Moscow State University the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev indicated major principles of the political, economic, and cultural interaction of the Eurasian nations aimed at building the Eurasian Union. In 2000 the idea was implemented in the Agreement on Establishing Eurasian Economic Community.

Thus, Kazakhstan leadership stood at the cradle of our organization and is still one of its most active members. EEC has proven its viability over three years of its history. At the same time development of dynamic and efficient cooperation between the EEC member-states is unlikely without the common and properly organized information space.

Mass media play a significant role in reinforcing integration processes of five EEC member-states: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. The path to integration is thorny and requires enormous patience and readiness to overcome serious obstacles.

The global experience shows that it is not peculiar to our organization only. It is something that all integration structures go through. And all of them engage such efficient tool as mass media to resolve emerging problems. EEC is not an exception. Within the framework of EEC an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in disseminating public information was enacted in 2002.

According to this document, member-states take upon the responsibility to create favorable conditions for activities of joint ventures, established on the territory of the EEC countries and engaged in publishing and distributing media products; as well as promote large scale and free multilateral information exchange with the aim to deepen the knowledge on EEC states.

We have always devoted significant attention to the work with mass media and acknowledge them to be an essential element of the civil society. Media have to play a key role in integration processes, first of all, as a subject of integration, and secondly, as a creator of the information space.

We feel acute lack of qualified analysis of EEC activities, which does not necessarily mean positive assessments only. There is a need for a view from the outside, unbiased analysis, and dialogue. This dialogue is building up. There is an increasing interest among journalists and within our societies in interaction with the neighboring states.

We are open to the press; we do cooperate and are ready to collaborate even more actively with the mass media. I do hope that the Eurasian Media Forum will give powerful impetus to further development of such cooperation.

I wish the Forum successful and fruitful work!