Trade and Economic Relations between the EAEU Countries during the COVID-2019 Pandemic

Abstract

The relevance of the selected topic of the article is due to the fact that the coronavirus pandemic and the imposed restrictive measures associated with it, which have swept the entire planet, affects all national economies and, accordingly, the integration groups that include these states. The EAEU is no exception. The Eurasian Economic Union was created with the aim of strengthening the national economies and the potential of the member states in the global economy, in which four freedoms operate: the movement of goods, services, finance and labor. Its appearance occurred during the period of global economic instability and geopolitical changes in Eurasia, which affected the situation within the EAEU.The purpose of this article is to study trade and economic relations between the EAEU countries during the COVID-2019 pandemic. Achievement of the goal set in the work was performed based on the application of general scientific methods within the framework of comparative, logical and statistical analysis.The results of the research performed in the article are based on the analysis of statistical information on foreign trade within the integration group, as well as on data on the prevailing trends in foreign economic relations between countries in non-trade spheres.It was concluded that in the context of the COVID-2019 pandemic, the growth rates slowed down, and the intensity of the countries’ foreign economic relations decreased significantly, which aggravates the negative trends in the decrease in the integration ties strength and the increase in contradictions between countries even before the start of the pandemic. The prospects for the recovery and further development of the EAEU member states’ economies are largely associated with the influence of external factors. The macroeconomic forecast for the states of the region critically depends on the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic course. An important factor is that each of the states in the region is in a unique epidemiological situation, which also makes it difficult to assess both the quarantine measures duration and the economic consequences depth of the imposed restrictions.Nevertheless, it is obvious that the EAEU countries intend to continue working towards a joint response to the threat of coronavirus infection. It should be borne in mind that the nature of such interaction will have certain limits associated with the current level of integration.