Shmelev is currently in Berlin at the invitation of the Russian House of Science and Culture. On Wednesday he spoke at a session of RIA Novosti's Russo-German press club. He said he would not be surprised if a breakthrough was reached on this issue at the May 10 summit between Russia and the EU. "The creation of a free trade zone is possible and realistic. Already, capital circulates both ways quite freely," he noted.
In Europe, as in the West at large, people often assume that "someone supports Russia financially," the scholar remarked. But as a matter of fact, the ratio between the amounts of money taken out of Russia and brought in has been four to one in the past fifteen years. Which means that Russia has actually been financing the West, not vice versa, said Shmelev, adding that this did not seem normal to him.
He expects the forthcoming summit to become another step toward EU-Russia integration in areas such as homeland and exterior security, economics, culture and education.
"Although there are experts who are expressing fears that difficulties may arise on the issue of exterior security, hopes are quite high that we'll be able to agree on something substantive," he said.
As things stand now, neither Moscow nor Brussels is keen to see Russia join the European Union, Shmelev argues. "The EU needs to digest the most recent [leg of] its expansion first," he said. Nor would Moscow want Brussels to determine domestic policies for it.
But this is not to say that the two sides don't seek to integrate. The EU does need Russia on board for a climate of peace and stability, for energy security, for the development of transport infrastructure development, for the advancement of science and culture, and so forth. "All this is achievable (provided there is) mutual consent," stressed Shmelev.
