By Vestnik Kavkaza
Last week, the head of the Eurasian Economic Commission, Viktor Khristenko, visited Yerevan where he spoke about the advantages of the Eurasian Economic Union. “Participation in an effective regional union enables countries to be heard in the world and influence the formation of new rules of the international dialogue,” Khristenko believes. According to him, after joining the Customs Union and the common economic area of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, Armenia will get all the advantages enjoyed by members of the CU.
At the same time, the head of the laboratory of interregional development problems of the Institute of Market Problems of the Market Problems Institute of the RAS, Aza Migranyan, told Vestnik Kavkaza: “Armenia has already voiced its decision to join the EEU. Thus, the government will mainly focus on the Eurasian direction, even though Armenia doesn’t exclude an opportunity of cooperation with the EU in certain spheres, including legal cooperation, development of democratic institutes, science, culture, and religion. Armenia will do its best to maintain close cooperation with the EU, which has been established.”
However, according to Migranyan, the question is about priorities: “If we speak about the EEU, we mean Armenia’s intention to cooperate in the sphere of economic and military-political cooperation. Speaking about civilization, humanitarian, legal, democratic institutes, there is clear striving for European values in a part of the European society. Development of the relations will go on parallel, they won’t be frozen. The Armenian party continues its policy “and-and,” i.e. both the EEU and the EU. The question of “or” is unacceptable for Armenia today, as it is in the geopolitical situation when it is necessary to use all opportunities for cooperation, including the international community, for settlement of the conflict situation between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
Even though Russian experts are almost sure that by 2015 the EEU will be established, they foresee many difficulties along the way.
According to Alexei Vlasov, executive director of the Political Studies Center "North-South," there is some general draft, probably 80% of which has been coordinated, on the basis of 20% of it there will be serious debates. Key issues are the limits of the competence of supranational bodies of the Eurasian Economic Union, the format of these supranational bodies, in particular, if there is a need for the post of Secretary General of the Eurasian Union, goals, that is issues to be tackled by the Eurasian Economic Union - all of this will be the subject of discussion at the next meeting by the negotiators from Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus as well as the leaders of the three countries.
Vlasov thinks that the second set of issues is the topic of the extension of the Customs Union: “Armenia has quite unexpectedly gone ahead of the main candidate for accession to the Customs Union six months ago, Kyrgyzstan. Now, obviously, priorities have shifted from the Central Asian areas to the South Caucasus, and it is likely that the final procedural processes of turning Armenia's application for entry to the Customs Union into a real one have already been launched, specific mechanisms of adaptation to the new integration organization. Then the question is: what will happen with Kyrgyzstan and how will relations be between the Customs Union, the Eurasian integration project and Ukraine in the event that the Association Agreement is signed with Brussels will change after the Vilnius summit.”
Vlasov is also concerned about the issue related to the elimination of EurAsEC: “Will this organization, in the end, be eliminated? Even though the principal political decision was already made and confirmed at the last summit of the Eurasian "three," what will be the scenario of the accession of new members into the structure? Will the Eurasian Economic Commission deal with it? Or will EurAsEC continue to exist until 2015, until the complete reformatting of integration structures and the launch of the EEC, and during this period the office of EurAsEC will be responsible for negotiations with Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan? Or all of these powers will fall into the competence of the EEC? Then another question is whether the Eurasian Economic Commission is ready to deal with these issues, to lead the negotiating process, because as we see after all that the attention of the ministers and officers of the Eurasian Economic Commission is on the preparation of the EEC Treaty. This, I believe, to be honest, is the main risk to the association - simultaneously three very difficult tasks are being tackledu: the complete elimination of levies still present in the customs relations between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus; the preparation of the EEC Treaty and the accession of new members to the organization.”
Nevertheless, Vlasov is optimistic as to whether the EEC will exist: “Ukraine has to make its own decision. No one is forcing it, although Yanukovych's statement about the fact that Ukraine could become a bridge between Europe and Eurasia, I personally think it is a political declaration rather than the actual readiness of the Ukrainian elite for this format of cooperation.
It is necessary to accept new members, but let's first define who will carry most responsibility. The last thing is to ensure the full operation of the Customs Union, that is, to eliminate all the levies, and then we can talk about the full implementation of the first phase of Eurasian integration.”
Sergei Mikheyev, director of the Center for Political Trends, thinks that “the Customs Union has only economic reasons. Although, as you know, politics is highly complex, multi-dimensional. Of course, most decisions are taken behind closed doors. There is also politics in the CU and everyone knows it. But, you know, it is not the primitive cliché distributed by media: "Russia wants to revive the Soviet Union with the help of the CU." This is a more complex, multi-faceted, multi-layered "cake." Kazakhstan has its own interests, for example, particularly considering relations with China, that is why it is more beneficial for it to be in an integration association with Russia. Belarus has its own problems, including in the field of political relations with Europe, in regard to maintaining the model that exists in Belarus. For Belarus, the CU is also partially a solution to political problems. Nevertheless, the foundation of the CU is economics.”
As for the EEC, according to Mikheyev, it needs at least some general guidelines for its development, not only economic, but also geopolitical, as well as values: “Not having a certain value model, it would be difficult for the CU to justify its existence at all, if one starts talking about political superstructures. After all, political superstructures don't only deal with the economy. That is, there must be some coordination of efforts in foreign policy, perhaps, defense policy, but for defense policy there is the CSTO, etc. I think that, in any case, the EEC will gain a common political ground. What it will be is another matter. I am absolutely sure that it will not be about any revival of the Soviet Union.”
Mikheyev thinks that three things are important for the formation of the EEU.
First, with regard to the economy, members of the Union are really interested in supporting their own producers and the formation of an alternative development center in the economic sense, because no one really wants to help us and absolutely no one is interested in our development in the world but ourselves. That is, cooperation can help overcome dependence on raw material.
Secondly, we do have common geopolitical objectives in politics. Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus perhaps for different reasons but nevertheless do not agree with the idea of a unipolar global world.
Thirdly, we have our common pressures, which we are interested in restraining.
“The basis for a political platform exists, but we have one big problem: the CU and the EEC are still leadership projects. This has advantages: the leaders can negotiate individually more easily. But there are also disadvantages: if one of the leaders should suddenly change his mind, or for some reasons retire, the entire project could be jeopardized. This is a serious risk for the CU and for the future of the EEC.”
“If the same leaders remain and the leaders of these countries do not change their position, then in 2015, at least legally, the Eurasian Union will exist,” Elena Kuzmina, head of the department for the economic development of post-Soviet countries in the Center for Post-Soviet Studies at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, thinks. “But the quality of the Eurasian Union is a very big question.”
Explaining her forecast, Kuzmina noted that the geographical structure of trade has not changed: “Only the Belorussian structure has undergone slight changes. It has effectively entered the market of Kazakhstan with its food products. In all the other countries it has not changed at all - neither in Russia nor in Kazakhstan. But if we have the Customs Union, if we are building the Eurasian Union, there would have to be at least some changes, but these changes have not happened. That is, the geographical structure of foreign trade remains almost unchanged.”
Kuzmina is worried about the structure of investments: “Russian investments in Ukraine were 1.5 times higher than investments in Kazakhstan and 2.4 times higher than investments in Belarus in 2012. Kazakhstan has worked perfectly around the closing of the border with Kyrgyzstan. The amount of shoes, clothes and other products that Kazakhstan had never supplied to the markets before has suddenly increased significantly. What does this mean? It means that Kazakhstan has successfully utilized Chinese goods, that is, the goods that were passing through Kyrgyzstan. Therefore, there is a serious conflict of interests.”
From Kuzmina’s point of view, Armenia is closer to us: “Not only and not so much economic but security issues are very important to Yerevan. Therefore, it is possible that Armenia will move faster, but it's also a question of what the leaders will agree on among themselves, what the countries are going to agree on among themselves. It is very difficult to say. Look, the "road map" with Kyrgyzstan has still not been developed. How can it be, if Kyrgyzstan, in general, has the majority of trade with Kazakhstan and Russia?”
Regarding such hypothetical member-states as Turkey and India, Kumina says that “these are more geopolitical games rather than serious economic issues here. First we have to build a functioning economic union after all. One can, of course, build them at the same time, but the position of the leaders on how many functions the supranational bodies are going to have are completely different. This alliance will be legally established, but when it will become a quality union is a rather difficult question.”
