The Value and Values of the Greater Eurasian Partnership

4 September 2021

The Value and Values of the Greater Eurasian Partnership

CONCLUSIONS

Digitization will directly impact integration of the countries of the Greater Eurasian Partnership (GEP)

“More profound cooperation, including that within the framework of integrated associations, can only make us closer and promote integration. Digital agenda and digital integration tools, first and foremost, boost the growth of integration. Cooperation on the digital agenda is the first point on our agenda, including in cooperation with other integrated associations,” Goar Barseghyan, Director of EEC Integration Development Department.

“We are at the digital transformation stage. Everybody is talking about it now. Digital transformation is a very new issue and it can either slow down integration or, on the contrary, give it a great boost,” Kirill Barskiy, Ambassador-at-Large, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.

Europeans may be interested in joining the Greater Eurasian Partnership

“The European Union may well be interested in the Greater Eurasian Partnership, in cooperating with the Greater Eurasian Partnership. Such discussions are already underway with regard to France and Germany. What do I mean? If you are looking for a certain balance, multi-polarity, versatile relations, you need to expand in space, to work along various lines,” Glenn Diesen, Professor, School of Business, University of South-Eastern Norway.

“We also hope very much that the leaders of European countries and European companies will be more and more interested in the companies and ideas of the Greater Eurasian Partnership and that sooner or later they will become involved in this important geopolitical, geo-economical, and constructive process. First of all, the Greater Eurasia must prove that the concept is an effective solution to present-day problems,” Kirill Barskiy, Ambassador-at-Large, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.

“There is an unpleasant and even painful fact still. Work today does not take the place in this process that we would like it to take. Nonetheless, there is hope and there are areas of growth. Even though geographically Europe is far away from the Pacific region and the Russian Far East, in people’s minds it is close because investment projects are being carried out. We plan to expand this work,” Tadzio Schilling, Chief Executive Officer, Association of European Businesses.

PROBLEMS

The macroeconomic situation in Eurasia is destabilized due to the pandemic

“We are in a difficult spot right now. The pandemic of the new coronavirus infection has driven back many Eurasian economies and we have not entirely conquered the infection yet. I hope that will happen in the very near future. We will feel the negative impact of COVID-19 on the economies of our countries for a long time to come,” Kirill Barskiy, Ambassador-at-Large, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.

“Our task is to stabilize the macroeconomic situation within the entire huge Eurasian economic space. Right now we are working on calculations in national currencies, on building common development institutions. We need to create a common stock exchange space with stable pricing terms so we would not depend on those monopolists who manipulate the markets and get rich off destabilizations,” Sergei Glazyev, Member of the Board, Minister in Charge of Integration and Macroeconomics, Eurasian Economic Commission.

The economies of Asian countries are not developed equally, their capabilities vary

“We wanted to sign some agreements within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). It did not work because the SCO countries have differently developed economies,” Sun Zhuangzhi, Director, Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

“The countries of the continent vary quite a lot in their level of economic development and their financial capacity. This makes it significantly more difficult for some of them to integrate into their national economies the green finance standards, which were mostly established for developed countries,” Mikhail Fradkov, Director, Russian Institute for Strategic Studies.

SOLUTIONS

Teamwork among the GEP members and creating a space for general dialogue

“We need a common development strategy. We need to get rid of barriers, create common technical regulations systems and a common standards space, in other words, build best global practices in Eurasia that are based not only on general recommendations but on full-scale trade and economic agreements,” Sergei Glazyev, Member of the Board, Minister in Charge of Integration and Macroeconomics, Eurasian Economic Commission.

“The Greater European Partnership means an opportunity for us to think about creating a venue or channels for a systematic dialogue in Eurasia. We know that such dialogue venues exist in various regions of the world,” Goar Barseghyan, Director of EEC Integration Development Department.

Reinforcing transportation infrastructure

“Modernization of the Trans-Siberian and Baikal-Amur railways that the Russian side began will help to increase the freight traffic in the SCO space up to 210 million tons by 2025. Development and connection of the Northern Sea Route and the Chinese initiative Maritime Silk Road will create a global and competitive route connecting the countries of the SCO, ASEAN and the European Union. At the same time, prompt construction of railways will become a top priority for development of transportation infrastructure in Eurasia,” Vladimir Norov, Secretary General, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

“We realize that the Greater Eurasian Partnership also implies development of sea routes, which are the most profitable form of shipping to Asia. We see that for a long time we have been developing production in the central part of the continent and that in time this will significantly help to saturate the spread of land corridors,” Samnang Tean, President, National Institute of Diplomacy and International Relation of the Kingdom of Cambodia.

“In experts’ opinion, creating a unified data base on international transport corridors may be very promising for the countries of Greater Eurasia. It should reflect routes, rates, terms and times of shipping, types of transport available, and route traffic. Partnership agreements in this area open up new opportunities for coordinating rate policies and trans-border cargo requirements,” Mikhail Fradkov, Director, Russian Institute for Strategic Studies.

“A lot has been said about transportation infrastructure. If you use land routes from Norway to Chongqing, China through Russia and Kazakhstan, it takes 15 days on a sea route, which is three times longer than on land. This is proven by the increase in cargo travelling on this route,” Tadzio Schilling, Chief Executive Officer, Association of European Businesses.

Economic transformation in the spirit of trust among the countries

“Going back to yesterday’s plenary session again, I would like to emphasize that it is trust that state leaders mainly talked about. For instance, President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev stressed the importance and urgency of cooperation and dialogue between near neighbours on issues of economic transformation without making them political or losing objectivity. This is a very important statement and important highlight,” Goar Barseghyan, Director of EEC Integration Development Department.

“So far the world has gone forward along the ways of liberal globalization where a zero-sum game prevails. Some benefited by opening borders and some did not. Endless trade disputes have been racking the World Trade Organization for many decades. The new world economic order is not a sum-zero game; it is, first and foremost, a search for mechanisms for combining competitive advantages of different countries, for integrational associations; it is a search for new formats of cooperation,” Sergei Glazyev, Member of the Board, Minister in Charge of Integration and Macroeconomics, Eurasian Economic Commission.

For more information go to the Roscongress Foundation Information and Analytical System roscongress.org.

The Value and Values of the Greater Eurasian Partnership

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