What EAEU is and how it works

What the treaty establishes

The Treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union was executed at Astana on 29 May 2014 in a single copy in Belarusian, Kazakh and Russian, all three texts equally authentic, and the Russian text prevails where interpretations of it diverge. Article 1 establishes an international organisation of regional economic integration holding international legal personality, and provides for free movement of goods, services, capital and labour inside its borders. Article 2 defines the customs union underneath that: one customs territory in which no customs duty, non-tariff measure, safeguard, anti-dumping or countervailing measure applies to mutual trade, and at whose outer edge the Common Customs Tariff and common measures on foreign trade apply to a third party.

Little of that began in 2015. Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia had applied a common external tariff since 1 January 2010, cleared the customs controls off their mutual borders during 2011, and opened a Single Economic Space on 1 January 2012. Article 113 terminated the instruments of both arrangements on the day the treaty came into force.

What joining costs

Article 108 opens the Union to any state sharing its objectives and principles, on terms the members agree between them. The state writes to the chairman of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, which grants candidate status by consensus. A working group of the candidate, the members and the Union's bodies then examines how far the candidate is ready to carry the obligations of Union law, and drafts an action programme along with the accession agreement that fixes the extent of its rights and obligations. That agreement is subject to ratification. Article 117 permits no reservations of any kind.

The cost that can be measured is the tariff. Armenia signed its accession treaty at Minsk on 10 October 2014 and Kyrgyzstan signed at Moscow on 23 December 2014, the first taking effect in January 2015 and the second in August 2015. A 2017 briefing by the European Parliamentary Research Service records that Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan had all been charging lower duties at their own frontiers than the common tariff, and had to raise them, which made goods from outside the Union dearer in each of the three.

Obligations at that frontier do not sit evenly against the World Trade Organization's. The Kyrgyz Republic joined the WTO on 20 December 1998, Armenia on 5 February 2003 and Russia on 22 August 2012. Kazakhstan joined on 30 November 2015, by which time it had been inside the customs territory for years. Belarus is not a WTO member.

The bodies, and the cities they sit in

Four bodies carry the work. The Supreme Eurasian Economic Council of heads of state and the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council of heads of government both decide by consensus, so any one member can stop a decision. The Eurasian Economic Commission is the permanent governing body and its place of stay is Moscow: its Council decides by consensus, its Board by qualified majority or consensus, and on a list of sensitive issues compiled by the Supreme Council a two-thirds majority of all Board members is required. The Court of the Union sits at Minsk and takes two judges from each member state. Where consultations over the treaty's meaning produce no agreement within three months of a written request, either party may put the dispute to that Court.

The Commission is also the depositary. It holds the single original, sends each party a certified copy, and receives whatever notice a member gives it.

The budget is compiled in Russian roubles from assessed contributions whose scale the Supreme Council sets, and the financial year runs from 1 January to 31 December. The treaty establishes no single currency, and each member issues its own.

What crosses the internal borders

Article 97 removes the employment permit. A worker who is a national of a member state needs none to take work in another, and an employer may hire without the restrictions a state otherwise applies to protect its national labour market, with national security and public order excepted. Education certificates issued in one member state are accepted in another without any recognition procedure, except in the educational, legal, medical and pharmaceutical spheres, where the procedure of the state of employment still applies. A national who enters another member state for work is exempt from registration for 30 days from the date of entry.

What the treaty postponed

The transitional articles carry dates for the parts that were not settled in 2014. Article 104 required the treaty establishing a common electric power market to be in force no later than 1 July 2019, and the treaties on a common gas market and on common markets for oil and petroleum products no later than 1 January 2025. Article 103 required the members to complete the harmonisation of their financial market legislation by 2025, and to establish a supranational financial regulator at Almaty in that year. Article 106 set Belarus a schedule for reducing permitted state support for agriculture, by 12% in 2015 and by 10% in 2016.

The customs territory is not continuous

Armenia has no land border with another member. Kyrgyzstan's only member neighbour is Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan's is Russia, and Belarus borders Russia and nothing else in the Union. Goods moving overland between Armenia and any other member therefore cross the territory of a state outside the Union.

Observers, and third parties

Article 109 lets the Supreme Council grant observer status to a state that asks for it. An observer may attend meetings of the Union's bodies by invitation and receive the documents that carry no confidential information, takes no part in any decision, and is bound to refrain from acts that would injure the object and purpose of the treaty. Moldova was granted the status in 2017, and Cuba and Uzbekistan in December 2020.

On a mandate from the Supreme Council, the Commission may negotiate with a third party. A free trade agreement with Vietnam entered into force in October 2016, the first the Union concluded with a state outside it.

The way out

Article 118 sets one route. A member sends the depositary written notice through diplomatic channels, and the treaty ceases to have effect for that state twelve months after the notice arrives. Financial obligations incurred through participation outlive the departure and stand until they are settled in full. Withdrawal from the treaty terminates membership of the Union and carries the state out of every treaty concluded within it.