Eurasian Economic Union, Israel to wrap up work on free trade zone deal in
2017 — official
Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) Trade Minister Veronika Nikishina said
that on the sidelines of the Russia-ASEAN summit
May 19, 14:45 UTC+3
http://tass.ru/en/economy/876773

SOCHI, May 19. /TASS/. The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and Israel may
wrap up the work on setting up the free trade zone next year, Eurasian
Economic Commission (EEC) Trade Minister Veronika Nikishina said on the
sidelines of the Russia-ASEAN summit on Thursday.

"We plan to efficiently launch talks with Israel on the free trade agreement
and would probably be ready to wrap it up next year," she said, adding that
"not everything depends on us here."

Speaking about talks on preferential or non-preferential regimes, Nikishina
said that the EEC plans to draw up the priority schedule, which will depend
on the degree of readiness or benefits or the beginning of talks.

"Among them are China [regarding the trade and economic cooperation - TASS],
Iran and Israel while we don’t have negotiation mandates for the rest though
we have the results of the work of research teams - regarding India, Egypt
and potentially Korea," she added.