The reason for the current notion of “Eurasian integration”

The strengthening over the last 5 or 6 years of the integration processes in the former soviet space has attracted the attention of the countries and institutions of the Euro-Atlantic region. The assessments are mostly critical since these integration efforts are seen as yet another attempt by Russia to increase its geopolitical influence in the region. Despite the slowdown of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) project, the various attempts at integration continue to be a compelling source of interest to nations and scholars alike. The integration in the Eurasian space (which does not only include the Eurasian Economic Union) deserves some consideration from the perspective of regional and supranational dynamics. The Eurasian Economic Union was a top-down decision and realized with remarkable speed in less than five years. The prime movers behind this initiative, particularly Russia and Kazakhstan saw the birth of the Eurasian Economic Union as the culmination of a process that started some 20 years ago and one which has been characterized by a series of milestones, each one progressively signaling the desire for increased integration. However, it is only since the implementation of the Customs Union that a truly supranational integrative process began to make progress. The EAEU project is a very pragmatic affair focused primarily on the economic aspects in which the supranational characteristics are theoretically important but have in fact evolved far more slowly. In some ways these elements are even less comparable with the system of the EurAsEC. However, the Eurasian Economic Union should have a much better chance of success as it is based on a specific and more complete institutional and legal base, in addition to consciously leveraging the obvious common denominators of geography, linguistics and history. The European Union model has been and remains an important reference point, which is widely used as such in the rhetoric of the Russian leadership. However, even if from a theoretical point of view there are many similarities, in practice the two systems are very different.