Triangle Relations between the European Union, the Eurasian Economic Union and China

Details

Supervisors

Defraigne, Jean-Christophe

Faculty

Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication

Degree label

Master [120] en études européennes (UCLouvain / USL-B)

Abstract

The EU is the largest trade block in the world whose role on the international arena is being challenged in its Eastern Neighborhood by the EAEU which is heavily dominated by Russia as well as in Central Asia by rising China and its global strategy called “One Belt, One Road” (now called BRI). The chosen topic is very acute in the geopolitical and economic contexts. With the help of this dissertation we would like to take a look at history and compare institutional frameworks, political dynamics, macroeconomic indicators and to see how the triangle relations between the chosen integration projects have been evolving throughout the last years. All of this is crucial to understand how the integration processes have been started, which factors actually caused them, how they shaped and affected the final outcomes as we see them nowadays. The existent sources will contribute to our analysis and allow us to answer our main research questions which is “Why should the European Union, the Eurasian Economic Union and the Chinese’ BRI be regarded as competing integration projects? ”. As we will be able to observe at the end every integration project is extremely individual despite the fact that they might share some similar features.