COVID-19 as a Test for Regional Integration Resilience in the Eurasian Economic Union

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic inevitably influences different sorts of interstate interactions, including regional integration. The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) is a young regional integration bloc without experience of major external shocks. Bearing in mind the complex nature of the bloc (supranational institutions alongside high preferences for sovereignty and weak market integration), we suggest an analytical scheme to test the resilience of the EAEU to the pandemic shock. We look at collective action, solidarity embodied in bilateral and multilateral intergovernmental reactions, and market integration. Unexpectedly, the EAEU demonstrated relatively high short-term resilience in collective action and market integration, while regional solidarity was quite high at the rhetorical level but low at the level of real actions.