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Putin worries West by creating Eurasia to counter EU
by Joseph Earnest May 29, 2014
Newscast Media MOSCOW—A treaty to launch the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) spanning Russia, Kazahkstan and Belarus has been signed by the countries' presidents in the Kazahk capital. The bloc will come into being next January.
Three ex-Soviet republics took the first step on Thursday to creating a trading bloc with a combined population of 170 million after years of tense negotiations. It still depends on approvals from the republics' parliaments.
Ukraine opted not to join the proposed bloc in February after an unprecedented to-and-fro wrangle with Russia over an alternative plan - aborted during unrest - to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union.
At Thursday's signing in Astana, Kazakhstan, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Eurasia bloc would enable the trio to strengthen their positions in global markets - alongside the EU, US and China.
The Eurasian deal stops short of introducing a single currency and delays the creation of a common energy market.
The treaty deepens a customs union created in 2010 and is supposed to guarantee the free transit of goods, services, capital and labor, as well as coordinated economic policy.
The agreement was "well-balanced," said President Nursultan Nazabayev of Kazakhstan whose energy riches leave Russia with little leverage.
The union should become a "powerful incentive for modernizing our economies," said Nazabayev, adding that he saw it as a "bridge between the East and the West."
Armenia and Kyrgyzstan have said that they want to join the union later. The Eurasian Economic Union will base its executive body in Moscow, a high court in Belarus and a top financial regulator in Kazakhstan.
The emerging Eurasian Economic Union is not a new Soviet Union. Nor is it a threat to the "old" European Union. Rather, the newly-emerging single market could ultimately provide better economic opportunities for EU companies. And in the event of real economic progress, the socio-economic situation could improve for people in the region.
Europeans, therefore, cannot be against Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia joining forces to create a single market.
Eurasianism is not a Russian rejection of Europe, as is often erroneously thought. It's the concept of another Europe - namely, an anti-liberal and anti-American one.
This - and not the project of a Eurasian Economic Union - is the real threat to a liberal and democratic Europe. Add Comments>>
Source: Deutsche Welle
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