Kyrgyzstan Becomes Member of Eurasian Economic Union

The Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan has become a full member of the Russian led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) on August 12, 2015 after it formally abolished customs controls along its border with Kazakhstan.

The Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan has become a full member of the Russian led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) on August 12, 2015 after it formally abolished customs controls along its border with Kazakhstan.

The ratification of its membership in the EEU may serve as a benefit to both Kyrgyzstan and the other EEU members. Kyrgyzstan sits at a crossroads of many Asian nations’ overland trade routes. In fact, it is in an area that once served as a portion of the historic Silk Road trade route. The nation’s territory could once again become critically important if China’s announced plans to establish a new Silk Road come to fruition over the next few years.

Kyrgyzstan’s President, Almazbek Atambaev, and Kazakhstan’s President, Nursultan Nazarbaev, participated in a formal ceremony commemorating the formal entry of Kyrgyzstan into the EEU on Wednesday. The event came via the Internet from a resort where the two leaders had been meeting to finalize details of the agreement.

According to the new arrangement resulting from the treaty, customs controls at eight checkpoints along the Kyrgyzstan / Kazakhstan border would lift immediately. This, in effect, creates a fair trade zone across portions of the Eurasian area similar to the NAFTA agreement between the US, Canada, and Mexico. Kyrgyzstan is the fifth member of the group, which already included Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Armenia.

Although Kyrgyzstan signed the agreement admitting Kyrgyzstan into the EEU in December at a session of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Moscow, protocols to the agreement went unsigned by EEU member states until May. Final arrangements pursuant to that agreement did not happen until earlier this week.

Russian President, Vladimir Putin has called upon all former Soviet states to join in the EEU, with the exception of the three Baltic States that have already joined the European Union. According to a 2011 story by the Guardian, Putin’s plan for the Eurasian Union is to grow it into a “powerful, supra-national union” of sovereign states like the European Union. In so doing, he hopes to unite economies, legal systems, customs services, and military capabilities, forming a bridge between Europe and Asia.

Putin’s own plan is to create a trade bloc to rival the European Union, the United States, China, and India. Critics view Putin’s interest in forming the EEU as a further attempt to revitalize aspects of the former Soviet Union and balk at the levels of openness and cooperation that Putin appears to desire.