2. The Grand Narrative
EAEU member states frequently contend that the alliance is not simply Russia’s ‘empire-building’ project, but instead a legitimate, demand-driven exercise in regional economic governance. The EAEU is a culmination of a multi-step project in deep economic integration. The EAEU built on the achievements of the Eurasian Customs Union (EACU), formed in 2010, and the Single Economic Space (SES), established in 2012.2 It promised a common market with 180 million consumers, in which economic policies are coordinated and existing non-tariff trade barriers eliminated. An ambitious regulatory harmonization agenda aims to reduce differences between member states, for example, by creating a common market for electricity, oil and gas – a perennial source of tension between members since the break-up of the Soviet Union.
This integration is to be delivered by a common, rules-based regime. Unlike the EACU or the SES, the economic union was established with a comprehensive agreement, the Treaty on the EAEU, which was signed on 29 May 2014 in Astana and came into force on 1 January 2015. The treaty provides a clear legal foundation for the union and aims to codify the hitherto fragmented and messy legal basis of the EACU and the SES. The treaty is ambitious to the extent that it introduces the concept of ‘the law of the Union’. Notably, the law of the union is premised on the principle of formal (institutionalized) equality of all member states.
The common regime is underpinned by a developed institutional architecture, where common regulatory and judicial bodies are given prominence. These include the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) as a technocratic, permanent regulator of the integration process (based in Moscow) and a brand new Court of the Eurasian Economic Union (based in Minsk).
The EAEU is an international organization endowed with its own legal personality, a radical improvement on earlier initiatives. Imbuing the EAEU with legal personality has been instrumental in promoting the vision that other international bodies, such as the EU, will need to engage with the EAEU on an inter-regional basis rather than with individual member states.
The EAEU is an important international actor. The union is an appealing body that can benefit potential members, such as Armenia, whose entry was negotiated in parallel with the Treaty on the EAEU and took effect on 2 January 2015, one day after the treaty came into force.3 Kyrgyzstan’s accession followed soon after, notwithstanding any misgivings about the country’s readiness to take on membership obligations.4 More broadly, member states’ leaders have promoted the EAEU as a vehicle to implement fundamental shifts in the architectures of Europe and Eurasia. Russia has demonstrated this by actively promoting the EAEU as a platform for structuring relations with the EU, ASEAN and China in regard to the Belt and Road Initiative. Moscow champions accession to the EAEU in its approach to post-Soviet countries, such as Moldova, which have signed an EU Association Agreement. Russia also promotes the EAEU as a functional alternative to the EU in the Western Balkans (specifically Serbia) and even in its policies towards current EU member states (such as Bulgaria). The EAEU’s importance as an international actor is also reflected in the ‘waiting list’ of countries, such as Israel, Egypt, Iran and Serbia, which seek to follow in Vietnam’s footsteps by concluding a free trade agreement with the EAEU.5
In sum, the bloc is presented as an attractive multilateral international entity engaged in deep economic integration on the basis of a rules-based regime. In fact, according to Tatiana Valovaya, minister of the Eurasian Economic Commission, ‘the history of Eurasian integration is actually an attempt to build something similar to the EU’.6 As such, lingering problems are acknowledged by EAEU politicians and experts as natural ‘growing pains’ in the development of such an organization; the EU has taken several decades to become a single market and an economic union. Scepticism about the EAEU project is often deemed by the Russian side to be evidence of ‘bad will’, denial of the region’s right to integrate on its own terms, or a sign of a Western anti-Russian conspiracy.
It is this narrative of a functional, rules-based integration that explains the EAEU’s appeal to various European politicians, officials and experts. In looking for pragmatic solutions to tensions between Russia and the EU, some believe that the EAEU may contribute to the creation of the much coveted ideal of a ‘free trade area from Lisbon to Vladivostok’ that could act as a ready-made ‘tool for peace and prosperity’.7 However, developments have not been smooth and to date the narrative glosses over not only the structural faults of the EAEU, but also its main drivers, which may suggest that it is not the solution that many are hoping for.
2 On the evolution of the Eurasian integration, including the Commonwealth of Independent States and two earlier customs unions see Cooper, J. (2013a), ‘The Development of Eurasian Economic Integration’, in Dragneva, R. and Wolczuk, K. (eds) (2013), Eurasian Economic Integration: Law, Policy and Politics, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 15–33.
3 Accession Treaty signed 10 October 2014, entry into force 2 January 2015.
4 Accession Treaty signed 23 December 2014, entry into force 12 August 2015.
5 At the December 2016 summit of the Eurasian heads of state, for example, it was decided to start negotiations on free trade agreements with Iran, Egypt, India and Singapore.
6 Valovaya, T. (2012), ‘Eurasian Economic Integration: Origins, Patterns and Outlooks’, EBD Eurasian Integration Yearbook.
7 For example, see Steinmeier, F-W. (2014), ‘Speech at Ural Federal University, Yekaterinburg’, 9 December 2014, http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/EN/Infoservice/Presse/Reden/2014/141209-BM-Jekaterinburg_ENG.html; Gotev, G. (2015), ‘Juncker opens the door to EU-Eurasian Union rapprochement’, Euractiv, 20 November 2015, EurActiv.com. http://www.euractiv.com/sections/europes-east/juncker-opens-door-eu-eurasian-union-rapprochement-319681 and Bertelsmann Stiftung (2016), ‘Free Trade from Lisbon to Vladivostok’, Focus Paper, https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/en/publications/publication/did/foc…. Moreover, there is a number of mainly populist and right-wing politicians in EU member states, who without knowing too much about the EAEU, appear to take Russia’s narrative on the project at face value.