A Tale of Two Unions: Russia–Belarus Integration Experience and its Lessons for the Eurasian Economic Union

ABSTRACT

The present contribution explores the evolution of the Eurasian initiative against the background of a more distant integration project, namely the Russia-Belarus Union State. It demonstrates that in spite of the Eurasian integration project’s more solid economic foundation and constant engagement from Moscow, the former has demonstrated a persistent similarity to the latter. The article looks into the divergence of interests of the Eurasian project participants, which has been exacerbated by the Ukraine crisis. Contrary to the main idea underpinning both the Russia–Belarus and the Eurasian initiatives, their evolution has not led to a full abolition of borders and these have demonstrated a persistent tendency to find their way back into existence.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCiD

Alena Vieira http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5643-0398

Notes

1. The emphasis of this article is not on the economic but rather the political dimensions of integration. For the economic analysis of the Russia–Belarus project see Nesvetailova (2003).

2. The EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative was launched in 2009. It includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. It has evolved into a project offering its participants the perspective of concluding Association Agreements (AA) with the EU, including the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTA).

3. The expression refers to the punchline of an old joke. A poor man asks for meatballs in a shabby diner, but is served a portion with dead flies on it. After indicating the problem to the waiter, a debate gets heated and the customer is fearful of being beaten up. At some point, the poor man holds back by saying: “You misunderstood me: I have nothing against your meatballs, but I would like to have my dead flies separately and my meatballs separately”.

4. The Single Economic Space established the governing bodies of the evolving Eurasian project: the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council and the Eurasian Economic Commission.

5. Minsk was offered a gas price of $165.6 per 1000m³ in 2012, as a package deal including both the acquisition of the second 50% share of Beltransgas by Gasprom and the participation of Belarus in the Eurasian Customs Union. The Belarusian precedent was supposed to make Kiev, paying a much higher high price for the Russian gas, concede to Russia’s demands (see Table 1).

6. Belarus’ signing of the EEU documents was related to the Russian leadership’s willingness to compromise and allow Belarus to keep the amount of export duties on oil products resulting from the export of processed oil imported from Russia, to a third party (approximately $3.5bn in 2013). The compromise was achieved for the year 2015.

7. More generally, the Belarusian leaderships have developed a strategy of supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence, thereby diverging with the Russian official position (Vieira 2014b, 2015b).

8. It is worth mentioning that Russia’s retaliatory sanctions were adopted without coordinating this decision with Belarus and Kazakhstan.

9. Regarding food products, the EEU’s central challenge is the absence of an institution in charge of a common policy of veterinary and sanitary control.

10. This is not to say the the Eurasian project should be ignored in terms of its strategic importance for of individual countries’ complex negotiations with Moscow (Vieira 2015b).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Kone Foundation and from the Fundação Ciência e Tecnologia/CICP.