As long as the member countries of the CIS still want to keep their own currencies, they will keep trying to fulfill the Maastricht requirements for integrating with the euro zone countries. This is like building an airport for streetcars. Wouldn’t it make more sense to lay more track?

Olga Butorina (Director of the European Integration Department at MGIMO, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ph.D. in Economics)

The Commonwealth of Independent States has existed for almost thirteen years. During that time, Russia and its partners have become convinced that integration on the post-Soviet region is truly necessary. It is necessary, simply because CIS countries have goals they can only reach together, from guarding borders and shipment transit to mutual investments and recognition of diplomas. The political will also appears to be there. The leaders meet regularly and never seem to tire of repeating how they are striving for better cooperation. In Russia, CIS relations have been declared foreign policy priority number one.
Nonetheless, the practical results of the CIS are minimal. Its authority among its member states and abroad is extremely limited. Many foreign experts consider it a club for amateurs and not an integrated commonwealth. For example, a recent 500-page work published by Stanford University on the economic ties between the US and the CIS countries did not mention the Commonwealth once. The study’s focus was accurately termed Eurasia or the former republics of the USSR. In a foreign affairs textbook by P.J. Feltham the CIS is compared to the British Commonwealth, or in other words a completely nebulous union of former imperial capitals and dependencies.
It’s time to say it plainly: integration in the post-Soviet region has stagnated. This is nothing to be ashamed of. In the 1970s and 80s the EES went through something similar, which Europeans themselves called “eurosenility.” The question is a different one altogether: will the CIS member states be able to take their unification to a new level, the way officials in Brussels did in the early 1990s by overwhelming the stagnating integration with a wave of large-scale reforms and establishing a single market, transitioning to a single currency, introducing the Schengen regime, and incorporating new countries.
Today’s CIS faces four main problems. First, it lacks a “custom tailored” strategy and for this reason unjustifiably mimics European experience. Second, there is no public discussion of the methods, principles, and means of integration. Third, the institutional structure and legal jurisdiction of the CIS is underdeveloped. Finally, integration policy is extremely lacking in transparency and is alienated from the public.
The CIS program documents state that it will move from a free-trade zone to a customs union, and then to a single market, and in the very distance future to currency and political union. This corresponds to the practice of developed countries and the “general laws” of integration. Yet these laws don’t exist. The EU, NAFTA, ASEAN, and MERCOSUR have all developed in their own way. For example, NAFTA is now at the very first stage of a free-trade zone and thinks this is just fine; it has no plans to move forward.
In many official CIS materials, the degree to which the commonwealth is ready for further integration is measured using Maastricht criteria. However, these norms have absolutely nothing to do with Russia or its partners. The EU only needed them to transition to a single currency; they served no other purpose. As long as the member countries of the CIS still want to keep their own currencies, they will keep trying to fulfill the Maastricht requirements for integrating with the euro zone countries. This is like building an airport for streetcars. Wouldn’t it make more sense to lay more track?
At the moment, nothing at all is being done. The strategy behind the CIS remains undefined. None of the member states’ leaders, political elites, or academic communities are discussing it. In the 1950s and 60s the discussion of a future united Europe was a crucial part of the continent’s political life. The topic came up constantly in speeches by De Gaulle and Adenauer, by Churchill and Erhard. At the time, a number of talented architects of integration appeared who are respected to this day. Alas, nothing of the sort is happening today in the CIS.
These very long public discussions, debates, and conflicts allowed the Europeans to create the model of unification that best served the interests of various countries, regions, industries, and social groups. In the confrontations and compromises, a system of EU institutions and law formed. The European bureaucracy is often criticized as too cumbersome and clumsy. However, it serves its most important purpose, to make decisions that take the interests of various parties into account and put these decisions into effect.
 It is almost impossible to understand what the agencies directing the CIS do and what the relationship the decisions they make have to the national legislation of member states, in particular for a layperson. Similar questions about the EU, on the other hand, are extremely easy to answer by consulting a beginner’s guide that has long been available in the libraries and book stores of EU countries. There are no handbooks on the CIS, just as there are no collections of approved documents or popular magazines such as the Russian-language Evropa published by European Commission Representative Office in Moscow. The official CIS homepage (www.sic.minsk.by) cannot be compared in terms of size or quality with the sites of the EU or ASEAN.
The Commonwealth needs major reform and here’s where international practice can prove very helpful. If reform doesn’t happen soon, the CIS will slowly rust.

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