Eurasian Integration Yearbook 2012

Tatyana Valovaya. “Eurasian Economic Integration:Origins, Patterns, and Outlooks”Customs Unionand the Single Economic SpaceIn addition, Eurasian integration does not contradict the more global project tointegrate the space from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Quite possibly, the post-Soviet space and Europe can integrate in the future and give birth to a newsuperethnos. All the necessary prerequisites exist. Europe, which is ageingethnically, simply has no other choice. It needs fresh blood and new “passionatepeople” to help it revive.Europe is ready for regeneration, for the birth of a new superethnos on thebasis of the old one. What will it be? Possibly, the European and Muslim oneif Europe merges with the remnants of the old Islamic ethnos, which has beenforced out from its traditional borders.Yet, there is another option, the European and Eurasian one, one that frightensEurope for the moment. Common Europeans associate Eurasia with the Huns,Mongols, Tatars, and communists. However, they also feel that this option ispreferable. This is reflected, among other things, in Russia and the EU’s decisionto form “four common spaces”, including the economic one.It is all the more possible because Eurasian integration is developing inaccordance with universal laws whose existence is proved by the experienceof the EU.The European Union is indisputably the primary source and pioneer whoseexperience was used to prepare the documents of the CU and the SES andwill undoubtedly be used in the preparation of the legislative framework ofthe European Economic Union. The European Union has tried the integrationconcept in practice blindfolded (not always supported by theoretical research).Our task is to thoroughly study the experience of the EU and learn from themistakes of the others, a host of which have already been made and will surelycontinue to be made by our European counterparts.This experience helps us formulate the universal laws of an integration process:stage-by-stage development, supranationality, subsidiarity, and convergence.The first law is stage-by-stage development meaning an inevitable rise fromlower to higher stages of integration.We all know what happens to a car if we start with the third or fourth gear. Theengine will stop. A similar thing occurs with integration – its stages cannot beavoided.Integration begins with the first gear, a free trade area. At this stage, membercountries remove, in a gradual fashion and in agreed timeframes, mutual tradebarriers while remaining absolutely free in economic relationships with thirdcountries. For this reason, they preserve customs borders and customs postsbetween each other to control the origin of goods that cross their frontiers andexclude those goods that are imported from third countries using preferentialEurasian Development Bank53