and the Eurasian Economic Union

Security and Cooperation in Europe, are at different stages of development. At present, the EEC and SIECA are collaborating to conclude a Memorandum of Understanding. In some cases, EAEU participation goes further than stipulated by the memoranda of understanding. For instance, Belarus has observer status in the Pacific Alliance and the ACS; the Russian Federation is an extra-regional observer of SICA, the Latin American Association of Integration (LAIA) and ACS, and also maintains a dialogue with the CELAC and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of America (ALBA). Recently, EEC has advanced in deepening contacts with various specialized international structures including many organizations related to the United Nations. Nearly 40 memoranda of cooperation have been signed with such organizations. The dialogue has also been intense with the regional commissions of the United Nations, including ECLAC, as well as UNECE (in which all EAEU member States are regional members) and ESCAP (which includes all EAEU countries, except for Belarus). (ii) Trade agreements Non-preferential and preferential trade agreements imply the identification and elimination of, respectively, both non-tariff and tariff barriers. The latter might also include agreements on liberalizing trade in services, investment, harmonising anti-trust law, etc. In 2016, the first EAEU FTA with Viet-Nam has entered into force and within a year trade volume increased by 36.7%. Furthermore, all EAEU member States are parties to the CIS FTA and in 2019 Serbia’s bilateral free trade agreement was transformed into a multilateral FTA. An important achievement is an “Interim Agreement Leading to the Creation of a Free Trade Area” with Iran that entered into force in 2019. Representing an attractive corridor to the vast market of the Middle East, Iran is not a WTO member, which allows the country to alter its trade policy regime depending on the economic environment. For EAEU economic agents embarking on business with Iranian counterparts, the trade agreement alleviates uncertainty and risk. In 2019, an agreement on comprehensive economic cooperation and a free trade agreement was signed with Singapore: these stipulate the liberalization in the spheres of goods, services and investment. Trade negotiations are currently underway with Israel, Egypt and India. The Greater Eurasian Partnership is another important strategy focused on the Eurasian vision of building an association open for mutually beneficial cooperation with internal and external partners. The most ambitious initiative within this megaproject is the conjugation of EAEU with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The EAEU-China agreement “On trade and economic cooperation”, concluded in 2018, was the first step towards this goal. Although the agreement is non-preferential and does not imply the elimination of tariffs, it establishes the prerequisites for trade simplification and ensuring transparency in trade policy. This agreement enables not only mutual trade, but also joint value chains that can spur economic growth in Eurasia.

3. Cooperation between Latin America and the Caribbean and the Eurasian

Economic Union

As of 2020, the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan have established diplomatic relations with all LAC States. Some LAC countries did not establish diplomatic relations with the Russian Empire or the USSR but nevertheless reached diplomatic agreements with all EAEU member States. For now, diplomatic relations have not been established between Armenia and Barbados; Belarus and Saint Lucia; Kyrgyzstan and the Bahamas, Barbados, Haiti and Saint Lucia. LAC countries often have a diplomatic representation based in the Russian Federation, Belarus and Kazakhstan from where they serve other EAEU member States. The Russian Federation

is represented by a network of consular and embassy institutions (including part-time ambassadors) in all LAC States. Similarly, all LAC countries, except Haiti, have representative offices in the Russian Federation. The number of diplomatic missions in other EAEU member States is significantly lower: Armenia has diplomatic representation in 7 LAC countries and hosts representative offices from eight States of the region; Belarus has 15 diplomatic offices and also hosts 15 LAC diplomatic missions; Kazakhstan has three and eight, respectively; LAC States are represented in Kyrgyzstan through 4 non-resident missions and no mission has yet been organized by Kyrgyzstan in LAC.

Map I.1 Latin America and the Caribbean: location of Eurasian Economic Union member States representations in each LAC country, 2020

Source: Prepared by the authors, on the basis of official sources. Note: The boundaries and names shown on this map do not imply official acceptance or endorsement by the United Nations.

Several international organizations, forums and bodies include countries from both regions cooperating with each other. Some of the most relevant examples are the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) which includes Mexico, Chile, Peru and the Russian Federation, the G-20, the World Bank (WB) and the United Nations (UN), amongst many others. Brazil and the Russian Federation also share membership in the group of emerging economies known as BRICS.4 Since 2009, the BRICS nations have met at annual summits to discuss and plan ways to address global challenges. The five countries represent approximately 41% of the global population and 23% of global GDP, so they are of great importance. The BRICS countries have created two important institutions: The New Development Bank (formerly the BRICS Development Bank), whose primary objective is lending for infrastructure projects and the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), an agreement to protect from global liquidity pressures. Both regions are also involved in China’s BRI although their representation in the initiative is quite different. BRI is devised as one belt going over land and one road going over sea as a project aimed at connecting Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. Since its emergence in 2013, it has evolved and now both regions support and take part in this vast plan. In 2015, a few months after the EAEU’s founding, the Russian Federation specifically expressed its interest in and support for China’s new initiative and the two have strengthened relations since. Latin American and Caribbean participation in BRI was not considered until 2018. The first country to sign a memorandum of understanding was Panama, soon followed by Costa Rica and El Salvador in Central America; Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, as well as Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Chile, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela (the Bolivarian Republic) in South America. What is more, although the large economies, such as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, have not yet signed on (Teufel Dreyer, 2019), China has recently been engaged in implementing the project in each of these States regardless of the existence of other regional financing options through the various regional development banks. In summary, the active participation of the two regions’ member States in the international agreements, providing stimuli for cross-border trade, investment and joint entrepreneurial initiatives, reveals their shared vision of the importance of ensuring the smooth functioning of global value chains, which comes naturally provided the historical attitude towards the principles of multilateralism. Nevertheless, the models for implementing these goals have been different. LAC countries appear to have become embedded in a greater number of trade-related agreements all over the globe. The region is tangled by the numerous overlapping integration initiatives, the majority of which are aimed at trade integration and trade facilitation although some aim for deeper levels of cooperation. In contrast, EAEU member States are generally concluding trade and economic agreements as a single party. The level of integration within EAEU is generally deeper as the association has entered the stage of an economic union. However, certain smaller LAC integration associations, such as the Organization for Eastern Caribbean States, in which a common currency has been introduced, seem to have ensured more profound advances as have some countries in the Central American integration that recently reached a customs union.

4 The acronym represents the five countries included: Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa.