Interstate Economic Cooperation in Eurasia: Actual Options of Development (International Legal Aspect)

Pravo. Zhurnal Vysshey shkoly ekonomiki. 2017. Vol. 1. No. 1. P. 178–186.

Shilina M.

World economic power is becoming increasingly dispersed, a process accompanied by a greater role played by various international economic associations of states in regulating international economic relations. Thearticle devoted to the fragmentation of international law demonstrates this kind of law can be groupedaccording to uncoordinated regulatory entities and proposes a solution to this issue. The factors in this fragmentation are analyzed through the prism of current processes in Eurasian regional economic integration.The approaches to coordinating the laws of regional economic associations with the regulations of theWTO are also reviewed. The new formats of regional intergovernmental economic cooperation in Eurasia,such as the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) are analyzed. TheEEU and the SREB are presently the main drivers of the transformation of Eurasia into a zone of joint development.These projects share a common goal and can harmoniously complement each other, and theirpotential linkage makes possible the formation of a common economic space on the Eurasian continent.The Joint Statement on Cooperation on the Construction of Joint Eurasian Economic Union and Silk RoadProjects (signed by Presidents Putin and Li Xin on May 8, 2015) raises some serious issues. The main one concerns the comparison and further development of the EEU and the SREB and possible ways to have them complement each other in practice. At the Astana Club in 2015 three potential options of co-existenceof the projects were considered: bilateral connection (meaning that EEU countries would be free to decideon participation in SREB), linkage within an EEU-China format, and linkage within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (the SCO). In this paper the author attempts to identify effective solutions to the problemssurrounding this process. The conclusion is effective development of the new integration projects of Russiaand China on the basis of the SCO is optimal. A mechanism for international legal regulation of economic cooperation entailing a gradual economic convergence of Eurasia is proposed.

Keywords: международное право, международные организации, международное экономическое право, international law, Шанхайская организация сотрудничества (ШОС), Russia-China relations, Eurasia, Eurasian integration, The Silk Road Economic Belt, Россия и Китай, SCO, EEU, economic regionalism, the Eurasian economic union, Экономический пояс Шелкового пути (ЭПШП), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), fragmentation of law, regional economic integration, фрагментация права