Four decades ago, a prominent integration scholar Earnest Haas warned that deepened regional integration may lead to a world comprised of fewer and fewer “blocs” competing for influence, thereby fueling conflicts instead of peace. While regional integration in Europe has been a monopolised realm of the EU for decades, the Ukrainian crisis in 2014 -emerged as a result membership competition between the EU and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) - indicated that Haas’s nightmare may have come true.
As the European integration project propelled by Brussels has moved ever closer to the realm of the Eurasian integration project pushed by Moscow, we have come to observe tensions, collisions, and even conflicts between these two unions. Yet contemporary studies on regional integration have largely focused on how integration promotes peace thus paid little attention to the “inter-union” dynamics of competition. This study addresses this shortcoming by asking: How do regional integration projects engage and compete with each other? And more importantly: Is there any prospect for the “integration of integration projects”?
By focusing on the normative dimension of EU-EEU relations, the study employs qualitative content analysis method to compare and contrast values, ideas, and principles advocated by the EU to those proposed by the EEU. The analysis reveals that, while there is a discrepancy between visions pursued by these two unions, the prime source of collision rather stems from the tactical level. In other words, these two unions came to collide with each other because there is no overarching international framework which regulates ‘the game of unions’. Above all, there is no coherent EU foreign policy on how to engage with the Eurasian integration process. The study concludes that institutionalising a framework of competition offers a promising venue to harmonise the EU-EEU relations without compromising values that each union promotes.
