Russia and the integration process in the Eurasian space
Ruslan Mustakimovich Shafiev
Doctor of Economics, Professor, Adviser of the State Civil Service of the 1st class, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Department of MEO, Russian Customs Academy
roushafiev@gmail.com
The priority areas for reducing the risks of Russia’s regionalization and the formation of a common economic space in the context of the development of the EAEU, primarily of the EAEU member countries of the WTO, taking into account the existing law enforcement practice, include:
1. The first direction: the need to liberalize trade in services. The task is more than difficult, since it affects the sphere of internal regulation of individual countries of the Union.
The formation of a single multilateral mechanism for free trade in services is currently inappropriate, since a general agreement will require a large number of exemptions, agree on sensitive concessions, and, of course, become a source of an increased number of conflicts and contradictions. This will certainly reduce the value of the mechanism itself, which is undesirable. Two trends can be traced in this direction.
First, the liberalization of the service market within the following states (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan) in the formation of a common Eurasian economic space.
Secondly, the liberalization of the service market between the EAEU member states of the WTO (Russia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan + Moldova) and the rest, it is desirable to carry out in the format of WTO obligations.
Given these trends, it is advisable to regulate trade within the Union in the format of bilateral mechanisms, which will include individual markets of individual countries that are of mutual interest to all EAEU states, including those whose service markets are not yet sufficiently developed.
2. The second integration direction of the EAEU development, relevant for Russia to reduce the risks of regionalization, is the legislative support for migration flows of labor, monetary and investment cooperation between the Union countries.
The proposed agreements on the regulation of labor migration should stimulate an additional influx of qualified specialists and labor force into the national economies of the Union States; include migration flows in the EAEU space in the legal format and optimize them taking into account the real needs of the internal labor market. The logic of the development of integration processes in the labor market in the EAEU demonstrates the need to accelerate the work on harmonization of the existing legislative framework, which should meet the partnership interests of the interacting parties. Obviously, in addition to improving the legislative and regulatory framework in the labor migration interaction between state, public and private institutions.
If we talk about the regulation of labor migration in the EAEU, it should be taken into account that the imperfect regulatory framework in this area, including the registration of labor migrants, reduces the level of investment confidence in the EAEU space and causes dissatisfaction with partners from near and far abroad. This, of course, slows down the modernization process associated with the active attraction of foreign investment, specialists and experts, complicates the dialogue that has begun on moving towards a visa-free regime between the EAEU countries and the EU.
In the monetary and financial sphere, multilateral cooperation should be focused on the mutual liberalization of financial markets, the unification of currency legislation, the expansion of the use of multicurrency in trade between the countries of the Union, and the creation of a system of collective payment and settlement mechanisms. Signed on October 18, 2011, the Agreement on the main principles of policy in the field of currency regulation and currency control was a significant contribution towards creating a legal basis for deepening the interaction of the CIS countries in the monetary and financial sphere.
Another fundamentally important area of interaction is the convergence of the infrastructure and procedures for the operation of the stock markets of the EAEU countries on the basis of the formation of international and regional financial centers of the Union; smoothing administrative barriers for the admission of financial non-residents from some countries of the EAEU to the markets of other countries of the Union; harmonization of legislation and rule-making in the sector of the stock market and securities.
The regulation of investment transfer will require the creation of an interstate regulatory framework that provides a sufficient level of legal guarantees and motivations for launching cross-border investment activities in the Union. Here it is necessary to establish tools for encouraging and mutual protection of investments in the EAEU space.
It will also be necessary to create a civilized mechanism for overcoming disagreements between regional investors and the EAEU states receiving investments, which will ensure effective out-of-court resolution of emerging administrative and economic disputes.
3. The third integrative direction of development of the EAEU countries is the formation of common energy, transport and agricultural strategies, the implementation of which will require fundamentally different approaches in the energy, transport and agricultural sectors, and joint efforts.
Expert article 3305
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