Eurasian Economic Union

• 1. Introduction

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  The Eurasian Economic Union was born on the 1st of January 2015, but its founding idea was spoken aloud more than two decades earlier by a single man standing at a podium at Moscow State University. On the 29th of March 1994, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the first president of Kazakhstan, told his audience that the Commonwealth of Independent States was failing its members. He called for something entirely new: a Eurasian Union of States, built around supranational bodies for the economy, defence, and foreign policy, and a single economic space linking the vast territory between Europe and East Asia. The room did not embrace him. Russia's response, he would later recall, was one of "sarcasm." Yet by 2015, his idea had become a functioning trade bloc of five nations covering 183 million people and a combined gross domestic product of over $2.4 trillion. How a rejected speech became one of the largest economic unions on earth, and what it costs to hold together Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan under one market, is a story that runs from the rubble of the Soviet Union to the oil fields of Siberia and the railway stations on the Chinese border. The questions worth carrying through this documentary are these: who truly controls the union, what does membership actually mean for the smaller states, and can a bloc built on post-Soviet interdependence survive the pressures pulling its members in different directions?

• 2. A Proposal Nobody Wanted

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  Nazarbayev's 1994 speech at Moscow State University was not his first attempt to float the idea. Earlier that same year, on the 22nd of March, he had addressed Chatham House in London, laying out an analysis of post-Soviet integration and arguing for a new union built around three pillars: common supranational bodies for the economy, defence, and foreign policy; a single economic space; and a shared defence complex. By the 29th of March he was back in Moscow making the case publicly. The name he proposed, "Eurasian," was itself a deliberate choice. Earlier regional agreements had used the terms "Euro-Asian" or "Euroasian," but Nazarbayev argued for the cleaner form, and it stuck.

  His plan moved quickly on paper. On the 3rd of June 1994, he signed the Plan on the Formation of the Eurasian Union of States and sent copies to every head of CIS member states. On the 6th of June, a press conference at the presidential residence in Kazakhstan introduced the project to the public through Marat Tajin, head of the Information and Analytical Centre of the Presidential Administration, and Imangali Tasmagambetov, Nazarbayev's assistant. On the 5th of July, Ambassador Tair Mansurov outlined the project before a hearing in the State Duma in Moscow.

  None of it moved Russia. Boris Yeltsin's government showed no interest, and without Russia's backing, the idea had no momentum. The work fell back into the ordinary machinery of the CIS and separate bilateral treaties. Nazarbayev would wait fifteen years before his proposal found a serious audience. That audience arrived in 2011, when the then-Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, publicly endorsed the Kazakh president's vision. On the 18th of November 2011, the presidents of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia signed an agreement setting the target of a functioning Eurasian Economic Union by 2015.

• 3. Building Blocks of Integration

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  Long before the formal union existed, the same three core states were testing what shared economic governance could look like. On the 20th of January 1995, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia signed the first agreements on the establishment of a Customs Union, aiming to open borders without passport controls between member states. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan acceded to those early agreements as well.

  On the 29th of March 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan signed the Treaty on Increased Integration in the Economic and Humanitarian Fields, beginning the project of common markets for goods, services, capital, and labour, along with shared transport, energy, and information systems. That 1996 treaty also established a permanent executive organ to oversee integration, which would eventually become the blueprint for the Eurasian Economic Commission.

  The pace of integration was slow through the 1990s, partly because of the economic crises that followed the Soviet collapse, and partly because Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan together cover roughly 20 million square kilometres, making the sheer logistics of a common market a significant challenge. On the 10th of October 2000, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan formally established the Eurasian Economic Community, known as EurAsEC, which Uzbekistan joined in 2006. It was modelled on the European Economic Community, and at its formation the two blocs had comparable populations: 171 million for EurAsEC and 169 million for the EEC.

  The Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia came into existence on the 1st of January 2010, establishing a common external tariff and unified methods for valuing imported goods. In 2011, mutual trade between those three states reached $63 billion, a rise of 33.9 percent over the previous year. By 2012, mutual trade had grown to $68 billion, while combined exports reached $594 billion and imports were $341 billion. The Eurasian Economic Space followed on the 1st of January 2012, extending the project to include the free movement of goods, services, capital, and labour. The Eurasian Economic Community was dissolved on the 1st of January 2015, the same day the full union came into force.

• 4. Who Governs the Union

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  On the 1st of January 2012, the Eurasian Economic Commission began functioning as the supranational governing body of the economic space. Its headquarters are in Moscow. When the full union launched in 2015, the commission's departments expanded significantly: the number of international employees rose from 150 to 1,200. The commission was modelled on the European Commission and holds authority over customs policy, macroeconomics, competition regulation, energy policy, and fiscal policy. It also has strict anti-corruption laws.

  The commission is composed of two bodies. The Council is made up of the Vice Prime Ministers of the member states, meeting once every quarter to oversee integration and approve the budget. The Board consists of ten commissioners, two from each member state, appointed by the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council for four-year renewable terms. The commissioners also hold the status of federal ministers in their respective countries. The Board meets at least once every week to manage the day-to-day running of the union, monitor treaty implementation, submit annual progress reports, and handle disputes.

  The staff composition of the commission is notable. Lower-rank staff is 84 percent Russian officials, 10 percent Kazakhs, and 6 percent Belarusians, proportional to the populations of the member states. At the top of the governance hierarchy sits the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, composed of the heads of state of each member, which makes the major decisions on strategy, direction, and the budget.

  The Court of the Eurasian Economic Union replaced its predecessor body in 2015, with headquarters in Minsk. Its judges, two from each member state, are appointed for nine-year terms by the heads of government. As of 2015, the union has no elected legislative body. A Eurasian parliament was discussed in 2012, but member states found it too premature and chose instead to harmonise their national laws. The approved 2015 budget for the union exceeded 6.6 billion Russian roubles, with around 6 billion allocated to the commission's activities, roughly 463 million for the union's integrated information system, and over 290 million for the Court.

• 5. The Smaller Members

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  Armenia's accession to the union on the 2nd of January 2015 came with a geographic peculiarity that no other member shares: Armenia has no common border with any other EAEU member state. The decision to join was announced by President Serj Sargsyan after talks with Vladimir Putin in Moscow in September 2013, and the enlargement treaty was signed on the 9th of October 2014. To make trade physically possible, Georgia guaranteed a free transit corridor for Armenian goods to reach the union, according to Armenia's deputy economic minister Emil Tarasyan.

  For Kyrgyzstan, which signed its accession treaty on the 23rd of December 2014 and joined on the 6th of August 2015, the primary attraction was simpler: easier labour migration to Russia. The population migration indicator for Kyrgyzstan tracked closely against GDP per capita, consumer prices, minimum wages, and unemployment rates in the destination country, meaning that access to Russian labour markets was a direct economic lifeline for many Kyrgyz citizens. Russia had also allocated US$1 billion to accelerate Kyrgyzstan's entry into the union, with Kazakhstan contributing a further US$177 million.

  On the 29th of May 2019, Kyrgyz president Jeenbekov used a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council to grant Nazarbayev the title of Honorary Chairman of the body. In his remarks, Jeenbekov placed the Kazakh president in a lineage running back to the Eurasianist thinker Prince Nikolai Trubetskoy, who first articulated Eurasianism in 1921, and the ethnologist Lev Gumilev.

  Armenia's trajectory since joining has been complicated. Research cited in the source indicates that EAEU membership has not contributed to economic growth in Armenia and may have slowed it. By the 12th of February 2025, Armenia's parliament approved a bill endorsing EU accession, prompting Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk to state that the EU accession process would mark the beginning of Armenia's withdrawal from the EAEU. In January 2026, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan confirmed the country would remain in the EAEU for the time being, but acknowledged that simultaneous membership in both organisations would not be possible.

• 6. Energy, Agriculture, and Infrastructure

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  Russia's natural resource wealth gives the union its energy weight. In 2012, EAEU member states produced roughly 20.7 percent of the world's natural gas and 14.6 percent of the world's oil and gas condensate, making the bloc the leading producer in both categories at that time. Russia holds the world's largest natural gas reserves, the 8th largest oil reserves, and the second largest coal reserves. Russia is also the world's leading natural gas exporter. Kazakhstan holds approximately 4 billion tons of proven recoverable oil reserves and 2,000 cubic kilometres of gas, ranking as the world's 17th largest oil exporter and 23rd largest natural gas exporter.

  For Belarus, access to Russian hydrocarbons is not a strategic luxury but an operational necessity. Russia is Belarus's main trade partner, accounting for 47 percent of all Belarusian trade. Belarus imports Russian crude oil, of which 45 to 50 percent is processed into oil products for export, at prices below market rates: $173 per 1,000 cubic metres of gas, compared with $250 for Armenia and $430 for Ukraine at the time.

  In agriculture, the union is also a significant force. In 2012, EAEU states produced 18.6 percent of the world's sugar beet and 22.7 percent of the world's sunflowers, along with leading shares of rye, barley, buckwheat, and oats. The Eurasian Development Bank disbursed approximately US$470 million for agricultural projects between 2008 and 2013.

  Infrastructure ties the bloc's vast geography together. The distance between Moscow and Minsk is 717 kilometres; the distance between Moscow and Astana is 2,700 kilometres. Railways have been the primary transport link since the 19th century, and the union ranks second in the world by total railway trackage, holding about 7.8 percent of the world's share. In 2013, the Russian government announced plans to spend 450 billion roubles, equivalent to approximately US$14 billion, on modernising the Trans-Siberian and Baikal-Amur railways, routes that Vladimir Putin described as the country's "strategically vital transport artery." Rail freight traffic to Russia's Far East ports had increased 55 percent over the five years prior to July 2013, reaching around 110 million tons per year.

• 7. Trade Beyond the Bloc

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  The union's first free trade agreement with a country outside the post-Soviet space was signed with Vietnam on the 29th of May 2015, after negotiations that began in early 2013. Trade between Vietnam and the Customs Union in 2011 had been US$2.24 billion. The agreement entered into force on the 5th of October 2016 and covers both goods and services.

  Relations with Iran developed over a longer timeline. A temporary agreement was signed on the 17th of May 2018 and came into force on the 27th of October 2019. A full free trade agreement followed on the 25th of December 2023, signed after the two sides agreed to eliminate customs duties on almost 90 percent of goods. That full agreement came into force on the 15th of May 2025. Iranian exports to the Eurasian Union had risen 8 percent, while imports from the union to Iran grew 16 percent, according to Bakytjan Sagintayev, Chairman of the Eurasian Economic Commission. Iran was also designated as an EAEU observer member by the five heads of state at a meeting in St. Petersburg on the 26th of December 2024.

  With China, the EAEU signed a cooperation agreement on the 17th of May 2018, which entered into force in October 2019. The agreement does not reduce duties but creates a legal framework covering customs cooperation, technical barriers, electronic commerce, intellectual property, competition, and public procurement. The formal "linking" of the EAEU and China's Belt and Road Initiative was signed by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping on the 8th of March 2015.

  Several additional agreements followed. Serbia signed a free trade agreement on the 25th of October 2019, entering into force on the 10th of July 2021. Singapore signed framework and trade agreements on the 1st of October 2019. Mongolia and the United Arab Emirates both signed interim free trade in goods agreements on the 27th of June 2025. An Indonesia agreement was signed on the 21st of December 2025. On the 21st of August 2025, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar confirmed that India had signed principles for a free trade agreement with the EAEU, stating "I hope that this FTA will be established soon. It is about market access."

• 8. Fracture Lines

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  Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, introduced visible strain across the union's membership. On the 10th of March 2022, Russia suspended exports of wheat, meslin, rye, barley, and corn to EAEU members to secure its own food supplies, though the ban was reversed on the 1st of April. On the 29th of March, a Kazakh government official publicly stated that Kazakhstan would abide by US and EU sanctions against Russia and Belarus, and would not facilitate any circumvention, citing concern about secondary sanctions.

  Moldova had become the EAEU's first official observer state in 2018, attending forums for several years, but stopped attending any EAEU meetings after the invasion began. Moldova's former Defence Minister Anatol Salaru stated in August 2024 that trading with the EAEU would be practically impossible for the country. By October 2024, none of the main Moldovan presidential candidates mentioned the EAEU, each treating EU membership as inevitable.

  As of February 2025, both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan were resisting full EAEU membership. Uzbekistan's constitutionally enshrined neutrality has been cited as a legal barrier to joining. In October 2024, the chair of a Uzbek parliamentary commission examining EAEU membership concluded that "Uzbekistan is best served by maintaining its observer status." Russia had written off US$865 million in Uzbek debt as part of efforts to bring the country closer, and Uzbekistan did join the CIS Free Trade Area in 2014, giving it free trade with EAEU members without full membership obligations.

  Critical assessments of the union have come from multiple directions. The Economist characterised the founding agreement as "vague, with technical details left unresolved, making it a political show rather than an economic one." Analysts at the EU's Institute for Security Studies in Paris stated the union "won't really register on the radar of the global economy." Experts citing Armenia's experience argue the union has not contributed to that country's economic growth and may have actively slowed it. What remains clear is that the union's future will be shaped in large part by whether member states outside Russia conclude that the economic benefits outweigh the political costs of alignment, a calculation that the war in Ukraine has made considerably more visible.