Mikhail Mishustin takes part in the plenary session of the 2024 Eurasian Economic Forum titled Digitalisation in Modern Realities: A Key to Ensuring the Four Freedoms

Mikhail Mishustin: "Russia has modern technologies and digital platforms, and it can produce complicated electronic devices. We invite our EAEU partners to make use of these achievements, working together to create additional demand and to strengthen our digital sovereignty and our common economy."

Mikhail Mishustin's remarks:

First and foremost, I want to extend my gratitude and welcome all the participants of the Eurasian Economic Forum, and I would like to express my sincere appreciation to our Armenian colleagues for their outstanding organisation of this event.

This year marks the 10^th anniversary of the Eurasian Economic Union. While this may not seem like a long time in the context of international organisations, we can confidently state that our integration project has been successfully implemented and is functioning effectively.

We have succeeded in establishing a model of cooperation that ensures a high degree of freedom in the movement of goods, services, capital, and labour. At the same time, the relationships among the participants are founded on mutual respect, equality, and consideration of one another's interests.

At present, the growth rates of the economies within the union exceed the global average. Our association is gaining greater recognition on the international stage. As President Vladimir Putin pointed out, the union has every opportunity to become one of the powerful, self-sufficient poles of the emerging multipolar world. Achieving this goal and progressing together will largely depend on how effectively we can leverage our existing potential, particularly through the creation of a unified digital space and the integration of the latest technologies across all key sectors of our economies and areas of collaboration.

The digital agenda holds a prominent position among the priorities of our union. Together with our colleagues from the Eurasian Five, we are working on an integrated information platform to facilitate secure interstate transfers of data and electronic documents among our departments. In the future, other countries interested in closer collaboration with our association and that have confidence in it may join this environment.

We are building an ecosystem of digital transport corridors, which will enable business partners to exchange crucial logistics information throughout the entire supply chain and optimise route planning and infrastructure booking.

We are also working on improving the mechanisms for the mutual recognition of electronic signatures to fast-track various business processes and encourage the flow of services and capital.

There is also the Eurasian Development Bank's projects titled Work in the EAEU. It helps job seekers from our countries find suitable vacancies and access the government services necessary for cross-border employment.

All of these are useful and much-needed initiatives, and I believe their number should grow. Meanwhile, we are also facing a significant challenge: ensuring the technological independence of the union while maintaining and increasing the rate of technology integration into the economy, social sphere and public administration. These system-wide tasks can only be accomplished through joint efforts. Moreover, we should rely solely on our own developments and innovations.

It is important to clearly understand that abandoning our digital sovereignty, hindering the harmonisation of digital transformation across the Eurasian space, and carelessly adopting solutions from countries unfriendly to Russia by some union members can lead to the emergence of trade and administrative barriers. This can undermine the foundations of the integration association. Therefore, we must focus on establishing the production of competitive and in-demand digital solutions and developing the infrastructure for access to electronic technologies and services. In order to do this, we must expand cooperation among leading technology companies.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin has designated the digital transformation of state and municipal administration, the economy and the social sphere as a national development goal for the next 12 years. To achieve this, a national project has been developed titled Data Economy and Digital Transformation of the State.

As part of this project, we will tackle several tasks simultaneously.

First, we will ensure high-speed internet access throughout the country. Given the vast territory of Russia, this requires its own low-orbit space constellation. We are developing the production of the satellites needed for this. Several test launches were conducted last year and in May. We successfully tested the laser communication and data transmission system between satellites, achieving speeds of up to 10 Gbit/s at a distance of 1,000 kilometres. We have confirmed the operability of the measuring complex and our navigation equipment.

We also plann to create a satellite constellation to meet the demand for high-speed internet not only in Russia, but also in friendly countries. The launch of almost 300 satellites is scheduled by the end of 2027.

We will continue to develop the infrastructure for the Internet of Things. These expanded systems for collecting and processing data are essential for managing road traffic and utility systems, as well as monitoring the environmental situation. We are open to cooperation in this area. I am confident that it will provide additional benefits for improving the quality of services and expanding trade, as well as help create new promising areas of interaction, including unmanned cargo transportation. In this context, if we do not cooperate on the Internet of Things, we may find ourselves in a situation where unmanned cargo traffic between us cannot be supported.

This new national project also provides for developing AI-assisted technologies. As President Vladimir Putin noted, the significance of breakthroughs in this sphere is tremendous, and rivalry between countries fierce. The countries that create such solutions gain undeniable advantages in digital transformation.

There are currently three such countries. Russia has created two language models and is creating specialised computing clusters and AI-enabled solutions for implementation. There are research centres working in this sphere at the leading Russian universities. In broad terms, we are building a foundation for a successful competition in the future.

As per the President's instructions, digital platforms are to be created in all economic and social sectors by the end of 2030. These platforms can quickly enhance the efficiency of our enterprises and the quality of services, primarily for the convenience of the people and businesses.

For example, popular public serves will be provided online upon application and in real time, or even proactively without an application, that is, automatically. We have this experience, and we are ready to share it with our colleagues in the five states, especially since it will be difficult to maintain a common labour market without harmonising the provision of services in the EAEU.

It is obvious that we need a strong IT sector and our own technologies to create a data economy.

More than a half of server platforms and informational storage systems used in Russia are domestically produced.

We are consistently increasing the share of Russian-made components in these systems. We will start using Russian software for building 4G and 5G base stations. We plan to launch serial production of these solutions next year.

We will organise batch production of tablet computers with a Russian-made protected mobile operation system soon. Initially, they will be provided to school teachers for working with e-learning content.

Overall, Russia has modern technologies and digital platforms, and it can produce complicated electronic devices. We invite our EAEU partners to make use of these achievements, working together to create additional demand and to strengthen our digital sovereignty and our common economy. There comes the time when we will have to more actively protect our common market of digital technologies from non-regional companies.

At the same time, we must focus on training personnel. All EAEU countries need complicated equipment designers and engineers and big data analysts. Since 2019, Russia has increased the number of government-funded places at IT departments by 150 percent. Today, we attract large IT companies to the creation and implementation of learning and onsite training programmes at our universities. We are open to cooperation with our EAEU partners in this sphere.

Colleagues and friends, when speaking about the digital future of our union, I would like to express confidence that cooperation between our countries in all the spheres I mentioned will help the EAEU become an innovative and successful association. An effective digital transformation will allow us to make a leap into the future and ensure prosperity for nearly 190 million citizens of our countries.

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