The EDB System of Indicators of Eurasian Integration: Eurasian Integration’s Trends from 1999 to 2012

For almost two decades, regional cooperation and integration has remained one of the most pertinent issues of economic policy in the post-Soviet countries. There have been hundreds of initiatives and projects that aimed at deeper bilateral and regional cooperation and integration. In many cases, these initiatives had overlapping membership and objectives, or they ceased to exist, or were re-established by the same actors. Agreements with similar content, such as free trade areas or customs unions, were signed over and over again by the same countries. This variety of outcomes needed a comprehensive system to monitor and assess the current processes of economic, political and social interaction between countries. The CIS region did not possess any of these comprehensive studies and measurements. Therefore the assessments normally had to be done on ad-hoc basis. The blank space was filled by the large-scale research project initiated and implemented by the Eurasian Development Bank. The outcome of the project was the System of Indicators of Eurasian Integration.