Non-recognizing the Other? Discursive deligitimation of the EAEU by the EU

ABSTRACT

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), despite being regarded as the most developed integration project in the post-Soviet area, has faced different hurdles in acquiring international recognition. Especially, the EU, the EAEU’s Significant Other, has been reluctant to formally recognize it, in spite of close ties with EAEU member states as well as of its own self-image as a supporter of regional integrations. This paper focuses on this puzzle and examines how the EU has been discursively explaining its non-recognition of the EAEU at the institutional level. Based on the analysis of EU-articulated narratives since 2010, the paper reveals three dominant representations of the EAEU in the EU discourse: (1) Russia’s geopolitical project; (2) a protectionist union; and (3) a dysfunctional union. These narratives have been used by Brussels to create the EAEU’s image as a threatening Other, thus justifying why the EU cannot formally recognize the EAEU and officially engage with it. The paper also identifies five different stages of the EU’s discursive representation of the EAEU since 2010, when its tone and content varied. The paper concludes that such non-recognition from the Significant Other still limits the EAEU’s international agency despite its increasing interest in cooperation with non-Western actors.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• Eurasian Economic Union
• recognition
• legitimacy
• discourse

Acknowledgments

Zhanibek Arynov wants to thank Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme (FMSH) and Institut Français d’Etudes sur l’Asie Centrale (IFEAC) for providing the ATLAS fellowship in May-June 2022 to visit Intégration et Coopération dans l’Espace Européen (ICEE), Sorbonne Nouvelle, and develop the earliest draft of this work. He thanks Professor Laure Delcour of Sorbonne Nouvelle for hosting him at ICEE and providing invaluable feedback on the project. All shortcomings belong to the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The EAEU, which initially started as the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, came into existence in January 2015. In the same year, it was joined by Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.

2. The Eurasian Customs Union (EACU), the first step in creating the EAEU, officially entered into force on January 1, 2010.

3. We acknowledge that the EU is a complex entity with multiple internal institutions. Yet, the European Commission is the EU’s main executive institution that deals with day-to-day relations with other external entities. When we mention ‘the EU’s refusal to recognise the EAEU’, we mainly refer to the absence of any formal relations between, first of all, the European Commission and Eurasian Economic Commission, as well as between any other institutions of the two sides.

4. Such suspicion regarding the EAEU’s geopolitical nature existed in EAEU member-states too. For instance, in Kazakhstan, EAEU-critics were mostly concerned about losing sovereignty to Russia (e.g. Nursha 2014), especially after president Putin questioned the history of Kazakhstan’s statehood in 2014 (Lillis 2015b). As a response, the Kazakh authorities constantly articulated that the EAEU was purely economic in nature. In 2023, president Lukashenko admitted that ‘no matter how hard we [Russia and Belarus] tried […] to impart a certain political overtone to our union, perhaps even a military-political overtone, Mr. Nazarbayev always kept us within the framework of the economic union’ (Kremlin 2023).

5. Despite the EU’s self-portrayal as a benign actor, some authors like Jan Zielonka (2006) argue that the EU’s conditionality for enlargement can also be interpreted as a form of new-imperialism.

6. Interview #5 (online), with EU official at the European Commission, January 13, 2023.

7. Interview #2, with EU official at the European Commission, June 20, 2022.

8. Interview #5 (online), with EU official at the European Commission, January 13, 2023.

9. Interview #4, with EU official at the European Commission, December 1, 2022.

10. Interview #3, with EU official at the European Commission, December 1, 2022.

11. Interview #3, with EU official at the European Commission, December 1, 2022.

12. Interview #4, with EU official at the European Commission, December 1, 2022.

13. Interview #5 (online), with EU official at the European Commission, January 13, 2023.

14. Interview #4, with EU official at the European Commission, December 1, 2022.

15. Interview #5 (online), with EU official at the European Commission, January 13, 2023.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan under the grant funding of young scientists for 2022-2024: grant# AP13068101.