Paper Titles & Abstracts

When in 2007 Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus announced their intention to set up a Customs Union within the Eurasian Economic Community (hereafter, 'Eurasian Customs Union' or ECU), there was little reason to believe that the initiative would be more more successful than previous failed attempts at regional integration in the post-Soviet space. However, over the last six years, this new economic integration regime has been a fast-moving and increasingly ambitious project. One of its key features is an improved legal and institutional framework relative to previous initiatives. The set-up of the ECU provides for supranational delegation, clearly identifiable and transparent legal basis, and binding, third party dispute resolution. Thus, it is presented as a 'new style' project - one that relies on a modern, rule-based legal and institutional framework to promote economic integration and deliver economic benefits. The ECU - as has been widely observed - is relying on an EU-style, legalised mechanisms of coordination. To verify this claim, this paper offers a detailed and comprehensive analyses the legal and institutional design of the ECU with a view to shed light on the extent to which the EU indeed has provided a source of imitation for the suprational institutions, legal basis and mechanisms for dispute resolution in the ECU.