Eurasian Integration Yearbook 2012

Tatyana Valovaya. “Eurasian Economic Integration:Origins, Patterns, and Outlooks”Customs Unionand the Single Economic SpaceTherefore, the process of regionalisation should not be deemed an alternativeto globalisation.Regionalisation means that two hundred participants in the global economycan hardly come to an agreement. However, if these two hundred participantsunite into twenty teams with common interests and economic interconnection,and if these teams will together build global rules of the game in the world’seconomic field, this process is expected to be more systemic, more intelligibleand less stressful.For this reason I believe there are no controversies between globalisationand regional integration. They are two sides of the same coin. The process ofeconomic integration, of which Eurasian integration is a dynamic manifestation,is one of the tools to help the global economy recover from its currentlychallenging condition.I also hope that this will change the world’s geography: Big Europe (from theAtlantic to the Pacific), that politicians have been talking about for a long time,will be born. Or perhaps it will be Wide Europe, from Vladivostok to Lisbon?Eurasian Development Bank61