Constitutional reset In Central Asia? The Eurasian Economic Union

Bowring, Bill (2021) Constitutional reset In Central Asia? The Eurasian Economic Union. Percorsi Costituzionali 1-3/20 , pp. 125-154. ISSN 1974-1928.

Abstract

The EurAsian Economic Union (EAEU) is the very recent (in existence since 2014) culmination of a project in which Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan have been the key motivators for re-integration in the region of the Former Soviet Union. This region, which had been highly integrated in terms of political and economic structures, was blown apart by the wholly unexpected dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. Russia immediately attempted to follow the example of the former British Empire by creating the Commonwealth of Independent States, comprising all former Union Republics of the USSR except the Baltic States. I outline the trajectory of the CIS, which still exists, and has some impressive activity. But the project of re-integration across the whole FSU space was definitively brought to an end by the Maidan revolution (Revolution of Dignity) in Ukraine in 2014, and by Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in Donbas. I show that the EAEU, whose members have attempted to follow the model of the EU and even to construct a competitor to it, have so far manifestly failed to do so. However, as a customs union and a special economic space, its achievements are considerable and even surprising. It has developed, in a very short space of time, a coherent body of law. Several textbooks for Russian university law schools have recently appeared on the law of the EAEU, which is now a fully-fledged subject of legal education and of scholarly research. But it has not succeeded in following the EU in the direction of political consolidation with a normative, human rights dimension. The focus of this article is on two of the five current members of the EAEU, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

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