President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev was the first to express the idea of formation of the Eurasian Union during his first official visit to Russia on March 29th 1994. It passed two decades before the Eurasian Union started working. Today it consists of five countries: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, but the union membership is open for other countries. Experts consider that the mutual respect of union partners should be in the integration of the project in order to provide the development of the industrial, trade, scientific and cultural framework of the Eurasian space for the effective work of the EAEU.
The General Director of the Center for Strategic Assessments and Forecasts, Sergey Grinyaev, speaks about some significant barriers in development of the EAEU.
Firstly, today in countries of potential members of the Eurasian Economic Community the level of the English language is higher than the Russian. ‘‘Over the past 20 years, our people have grown apart. If earlier we were Soviet people, so today there are only nationally oriented elites and the peoples. And the most important thing is the religious diversification in this area. Earlier, we didn’t discuss the existence of Islam, Orthodoxy, or other religious denominations. Unfortunately, today we have to reckon with this very seriously."
Secondly, "We have lost integration of industrial relations. ‘‘In fact, today we have such relations between Russia and Belarus. Recent significant achievements between Russia and Ukraine in the field of aviation and rocketry have been lost. We have an example, when an attempt to restore the production of the IL-76 with the help of the Tashkent aircraft plant led only to disappointment.''
However, Grinyaev is sure that the Eurasian project will be implemented. In his opinion, there are at least two reasons.
The first reason. The modern world has changed, and now it isn’t like it was about 10-15 years ago. These changes affected climatic, social, economic and other aspects. There is a prospect of the Northern Sea Route after 10-15 years, a route around Eurasia and from Japan to Europe. Today, China has clearly made the restoration of the Great Silk Road a national priority. One way or another the area of Eurasia will be penetrated by traffic, transport corridors that will determine the development of this part of the land in the 21st century. And today we can see an actual struggle for the priorities in respect of the following fact: who will control Eurasia, and who will control the material, information, financial and other flows?
The second reason. The continuing imbalances in the global financial system. We continue to live in a state of permanent financial crisis. One of the solutions, which is de facto provided by the global elite, is shifting the problems that are tied now with the American economy and the US dollar, onto regional associations and regional national economies. That is why there have been so many different associations and unions over the last 10 years. The BRICS, APEC, the SCO and the Eurasian economic space were established. Europe is reviewing its internal relations. It is quite clear that these projects are aimed at shifting that part of the burden from the United States onto these associations.
‘‘The priority of the Eurasian project if it will be developed as a Russian project and a union of pro-Russian countries. The matter of a national currency, as the single currency of the Eurasian Economic Union, will be dominant. If the dollar, the euro, and supranational structures of the World Bank remain in the Eurasian Economic Union in the form of the WTO, we won’t be able to speak about any systemic basis,’’ Grinyaev says.
