Seven months ago the agreement on establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union began operating. Today the Union involves Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. Experts view Eurasian integration differently. Some say that the project is based on pragmatic economic principles only. Others state that, due to the EAEU, Russia is trying to improve its geopolitical weight. Vladimir Jabarov, First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee for Foreign Affairs, recalls “when there was a confrontation between the Warsaw Pact countries and NATO, we were also very sensitive to the creation of the European Union. But this was just talk, this was only criticism. The Soviet Union did not take any action to violate the creation of the European Union. And our EAEU is being created under strong pressure from the West, in an extreme attempt to tear the countries apart at any cost. A good example is Ukraine, where everything has been done so that Ukraine would not be included in the EAEU, and at the first stage the country has not been included even in the Customs Union.”
In November 2011 Jabbarov visited Kiev with a delegation of the Federation Council, where President Yanukovych met them. "During the year we will be in the Customs Union. So elections will be held and we will enter the Customs Union,” the senator cited President Yanukovich. “We see how this ended and where Ukraine is now,” Jabbarov said.
According to him, “if someone thinks that the creation of the EAEU would directly improve the lives in all countries and everyone would feel this, then this is misleading. Nothing happens quickly. Of course, this takes time, because in a day you can only destroy something, as happened in December 1991, but it is much harder to build. There is a lot of mistrust, because any integration processes are perceived in the West, and in many CIS countries, there is no need to hide this fact as an attempt to recreate the Soviet Union. When we discussed this topic at the CIS PA, we raised the very serious issue of the political component. All the delegations that have signed the Eurasian Treaty then said, "No, there should not be any political component, there should be no supra-national political bodies." This is probably correct, because if you remember, again, the same story, the example of the European Union, firstly, this was only an economic issue. But life has shown that the economy cannot exist alone. Years passed, and the EU countries created the European Parliament, began creating other political structures, such as the European Commission. Life itself will lead us to this. It is not necessary to rush this process artificially,” the Russian senator thinks.
Speaking about a single currency which could be introduced in the EAEU, he said: “A very wise decision was taken by the heads of our countries when they said that before 2025 there is no need even to talk about this measure. Because we see how the powerful German economy, which has become the locomotive of the eurozone, is suffocating, it cannot pull them out. There is instability in Greece, in Portugal, in Spain, in Italy. So with regard to this issue we must take very careful steps.”
Meanwhile, Jabbarov thinks that the EAEU has an advantage over the EU: “We used to be a big country. We are close on a subconscious mental level. We do not need to use interpreters to communicate. I hope that this course would be absolutely correct, and despite all the difficulties that we have, despite the new wave of the global crisis, which we have also faced, we will overcome these difficulties.”
