Eurasian Economic Union: Achievement and Сhallenges of Integration

Abstract

The question of Eurasian integration is of great interest to politicians and academics for many reasons. First, it is the only existing and developing integration association in the former Soviet Union. Second, this association is valid in the neighbourhood of the European Union. Thirdly, this association is close to the sphere of important trade and investment interests of China. And finally, it is important that the EAEU was formed after 2014 — the beginning of the “sanctions” period in the life of Russia and the world. Integration in the Eurasian space is a unique case when previously closely interconnected countries within the framework of the central planning system, having survived the collapse of the former economic reality and still being in a protracted transformation process, restore their economic ties in a new market environment. In the case of the CIS, reintegration has not developed for some political reasons, despite available economic conditions. In addition to the analysis of macroeconomic and institutional parameters of the countries, the article presents the results of the classification of the regions of four EAEU countries: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. To optimise the cross-country comparison, we simplified the classification by the peculiarities of the administrative division of other EAEU members.

Keywords

• eurasian integration
• economic growth
• human capital
• quality of institutions
• doing business
• mutual trade
• regional inequality
• specialisation of the region