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ABSTRACT
The goal of this paper is to investigate how the establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union (and of the Customs Union, its predecessor organisation) affected the way Eurasian countries interact with the WTO. There exists a large literature on the tensions between the regional economic integration and the multilateral trade system; adjusting its arguments for the case of the post-Soviet Eurasia, I ask whether establishment of the CU/EAEU reduced the interest of Eurasian countries towards the WTO membership, constrained them in the WTO negotiations or affected their commitments towards the WTO. For the first two questions, I find that the CU/EAEU did not make WTO membership less desirable or feasible. My findings with respect to the third question are ambiguous. Overall, the paper concludes that Eurasian regionalism does not constitute a major constraint for the Eurasian countries’ participation in the multilateral trade system (at least for the large countries).
Acknowledgments
This article is supported by the MOE Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences in Universities of China (Center for Russian Studies of East China Normal University), Project Number: 16JJDGJW004. The author appreciates the helpful comments of Anastassia Obydenkova, Daria Ushkalova (who was crucial for the author’s understanding on the effect EAEU had on the WTO obligations of Kyrgyzstan and Armenia) and an anonymous referee. All mistakes remain my own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. There is a growing discussion about these ‘alternative’ institutions, sponsored not only by Russia, but also (and to an even larger extent) by China, e.g., Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (see Obydenkova & Rodrigues Vieira, Citation2020; Rodrigues Vieira, Citation2018; Wan, Citation2016; Wilson, Citation2019). For Eurasia, furthermore, there exists an established scholarly literature treating post-Soviet regionalism as a sui generis phenomenon, which is fundamentally different from regional organisations in other parts of the world and thus cannot be compared to those (for discussion see Hancock & Libman, Citation2016; Libman, Citation2020b; Obydenkova & Libman, Citation2019).
2. This is not to say that the alternative point of view was absent; there have been numerous liberal economists commenting on Eurasian regionalism or engaging in research on this topic; yet historically they seem to play a relatively smaller role.
3. Three founding member states of the CU were Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. In 2015, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan joined the EAEU.
4. My analysis includes both CU and EAEU, which is a certain simplification – from the legal perspective, there is an important difference between these two structures (Dragneva, Citation2017). Still, the main goal of this paper is not to study the legal aspects of the countries’ commitments but rather the political-economic logic of constraints Eurasian regionalism imposes: do countries find a way to advance their WTO agenda in spite of the CU/EAEU membership? Because the CU and the EAEU are both organisations with relatively large ‘real’ content (as opposed to their predecessors, which were purely ink on paper structures), similar membership and similar goals pursued by key countries (Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan), my approach is justified.
5. This is discussed in the paper by Golovnin and Ushkalova in this special issue.
6. Hypothetically, Eurasian regionalism could have been based on a different, more flexible approach to regionalism: however, in practice, a model focusing on trade aiming at creating a customs union was selected.
7. Dragneva and Hartwell in their article in this special issue look at whether this liberalisation actually happens in the EAEU.
8. Ironically, Aleksandr Dugin, who is often seen as a conservative anti-Western thinker and a Eurasianist par excellence (Shlapentokh, Citation2007), does not see the EAEU as an antipode to the WTO, rather suggesting that the trade bloc will make it easier for Russia to defend its interests in the WTO (see https://iq.hse.ru/news/177697362.html).
9. See also Kommersant Dengi, 24 October 2011.
11. https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news19_e/acc_blr_11jul19_e.htm; https://www.dw.com/ru/почему-беларусь-так-долго-не-может-вступить-в-вто/a-52633946; http://www.economy.gov.by/ru/peregovory-ru/
12. Reuters, 18 June 2009.
13. The CU had to start negotiations with WTO in 2010, while for Russia as an individual country accession to the WTO in mid-2010 was an opportunity (Vedomosti, 10 June 2009).
14. TUT.by, 12 June 2009. The US Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke described the new approach to joining the WTO as ‘unworkable’ (https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/us-says-russias-new-wto-entry-proposal-unworkable.264340).
15. Vedomosti, 10 June 2009.
16. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 13 July 2009.
17. Vedomosti, 11 June 2009.
18. Lenta.ru, 10 June 2009.
19. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 25 June 2009.
20. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 13 July 2009.
21. Ivzestiya, 12 August 2009; Kommersant, 12 August 2009.
22. NewsMarket, 28 April 2010.
26. EurAsEC was a loose alliance of five countries (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan), which was established in 2000 and preceded the EAEU. EurAsEC achieved only very limited progress in terms of economic integration. The CU was originally created as part of the EurAsEC framework, implying that the judges from Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan in the EurAsEC Court acted as the Court of the CU. In 2015, EurAsEC ceased to exist.
28. For Kazakhstan, similarly, being part of the CU/EAEU after 2012 could have prepared ist businesses to functioning according to WTO rules (https://regnum.ru/news/economy/2381809.html)
29. Kommersant, 26 June 2017. See also Tourdyeva (Citation2012); Wolffgang et al. (Citation2013)
30. Vedomosti, 27 July 2015; Kommersant, 17 October 2015; Central Asia Monitor, 18 February 2016.
31. The problems emerged, for example, if Kazakhstani companies produced goods, for which reduced WTO tariff could have been applied, in Kazakhstan itself: these goods, since they were never imported to Kazakhstan, were allowed for export to the EAEU countries. See Zona.kz, 27 September 2019.
32. https://www.asmap.ru/detail-news/kazakhstan-na-granitse-s-rossiey-snova-nachali-proveryat-gruzy-; https://kz.expert/ru/materials/analitika/1118_pereborshili_s_kontrolem_
33. https://news.ati.su/article/2019/08/20/vse-voprosy–k-nalogovikam-pochemu-na-rossiysko-kazahstanskoy-granice-skaplivayutsya-probki-iz-bolshegruzov-163,218/
34. There is no evidence of such plans ever explicitly stated by the Russian leadership whatsoever.
35. Kommersant, 27 February 2018.
40. See also the paper by Golovnin and Ushkalova in this special issue.
41. Rather, it reflects the fact that the country, before joining the EAEU, was extremely lax in implementing any forms of customs control, transforming it into an entrepot for Chinese goods re-exported to other post-Soviet countries, see Kaminski and Raballand 2006; for the re-examination of how these trade flows developed after Kyrgyzstan joined the EAEU see Alff (Citation2016).
42. There is hope that the EAEU could serve as a ‘preparatory stage’ for the WTO for Uzbekistan, should it join the EAEU (https://review.uz/ru/news/mirovoy-trendi/ekspert-tseir-o-preimushestvax-liberalizatsii-torgovli-v-ramkax-eaes-ili-vto).
43. Thus, to provide a very recent example: in early 2020 Kazakhstan rejected the initiative of the new Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin to declare sport, environment and tourism strategic priorities of the EAEU development, insisting that the current agenda of the EAEU remained unchanged – thus, even a relatively limited increase of the EAEU’s agenda beyond purely economic goals seems to be considered as threatening (https://central.asia-news.com/ru/articles/cnmi_ca/features/2020/02/07/feature-01)
44. These findings fit the results of Wilson Sokhey and Kim (Citation2015), who show that while dependence on trade with Russia reduces the willingness of post-Communist countries to liberalise their trade regime, membership in WTO or EU overcomes this effect.
45. Negative experience from failed regional integration projects has a substantial impact on how countries plan their new integration initiatives, see Gray (Citation2018). Even for what was considered a successful regional integration, financial turbulences triggered by crisis 2008, caused radical decline in trust among member-states, see Arpino and Obydenkova (Citation2020); Obydenkova and Arpino (Citation2018).
46. On Belarusian accession to WTO while being a EAEU member see Balistreri et al. (Citation2017)
47. Thus, the EU and Armenia abandoned the idea of a free trade area once Armenia declared its goal of joining the CU and had to choose a different design for their cooperation – again, it is a case of a small country with weak bargaining power. For details, see Delcour (Citation2018); Harzl and Mickonytė (Citation2019).