YEREVAN, February 10. /ARKA/. Andrei Ryabov, a leading researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, chief editor of “World Economy and International Relations’ magazine of the Russian Academy of Sciences and an expert for the Gorbachev Foundation and the Moscow Carnegie Fund, believes that it is difficult to be optimistic about the EU’s prospects.
“I would like to be optimistic, but so far it is impossible. It is clear that EU will need to build closer integration within itself and head towards what could be called as the United States of Europe in order to exit strong from the current crisis and become strong enough to compete not only with the United States, China and Japan, but also with members of ASEAN, Brazil and India,’ he said during an online interview in response to a question from ARKA news agency.
Andrei Ryabov’s interview was part of South Caucasus Security and NATO project which interviews leading experts and political leaders from different countries for Armenian, Azerbaijan, and Georgian media. This is the project of ‘Region’ Armenian center backed by NATO’s Public Diplomacy Department.
According to Ryabov, the Europeans do not have either the will or the leaders who can implement these ambitious goals.
“The second problem is that Europeans should abandon the relaxed lifestyle and part of social security benefits, otherwise it would be difficult to compete with China and ASEAN. It seems that the Europeans are not ready for this challenge either,” he said. -0-
