This article is part of our special report A busy EU-Kazakhstan agenda. Former European Commission Vice President Günther Oettinger called on Monday (10 May) for elevating the EU-Kazakhstan relations to “a new level”, inviting the European business to invest more in added-value products manufactured in the Central Asian country. Oettinger spoke as an online guest at a conference in Brussels organised by the Berlin Eurasian Club, a business association of mostly German and Kazakh businesses, which coincided with the EU-Kazakhstan Cooperation Council that took place in person in the Belgian capital on the same day. The former EU Commissioner argued that time was ripe for Kazakhstan, a producer of raw materials among which he mentioned copper, nickel, iron, manganese, gold, and also oil and gas, to process these raw materials into added-value products necessary for industrial production, naming the chemical industry, the automotive sector and the pharmaceutical sector.