The organizers of the forum – the Russkiy Mir Foundation, Unity for Russia Foundation and Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Russia) – declared that the discussion should be directed at finding a positive agenda. 

“As an economist, I understand that there are some things which are more important that economics,” said Ruslan Grinberg, Director of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, began the conversation in the spirit of compromise. “No one expected that geopolitics would raise its ugly head. When I was with Mikhail Gorbachev at the festivities in honor of the reunification of Germany and I saw how the Germans related to us the thought occurred: ‘Here is our chance for good neighborly relations.’ It’s just that the participants of these mutual economic sanctions need to recognize that the bone of contention between us is Ukraine. The West could not deal with is victor’s complex with regard to Russia, and Russia could get over its big brother complex with Ukraine. The sides need to recognize this and move on.”

Grinberg’s stimulated a lively conversation. Moreover, both the representatives of the EU and representatives of Russia agreed with the assertion of one of the participants of the meeting that all sides needs to overcome their narrow perspectives: “After all, what we see depends on what side of the mountain we are on.”

However, both sides continue to see their side of the mountain. Moscow remains convinced that there should be no preconditions to dialogue while Brussels has made clear that sanctions against Russia will only be removed if Russia honors its neighbors’ right to self-determination and demonstrates an understanding that no one has the right interfere in the affairs of other countries, and the situation with Crimea is a blatant rejection of this.

The officials participating in the meeting on behalf of the European Union and European Commission requested that they not be mentioned by name, such was the format of the meeting. At the same time, they emphasized: “This is our principled position.” 

“Our position is also based on principles,” replied Vyacheslav Nikonov, Chairman of the Management Board of the Russkiy Mir Foundation. “This includes the right of a nation to self-determination. And believe me, some brave people in the Kremlin made the decision that Germany should be reunited as an expression of its right to self-determination. It’s another mater that following the end of the Cold War the United States determines what is legal and what is illegal. For example, is the bombing of Libya and Syria without a UN mandate legal? Or as a continuation of the “color revolutions” – was the constitutional coup on Maidan in February 2014 legal? In such a situation for us 90% voting for the reunification of Crimea with Russia – this is a matter of principle. Just as the right of Donbass to autonomy and peace. Nonetheless, we emphasize the need for some form of dialogue.”

Thus the participants of the forum discussed just how this dialogue between the European Union and Eurasian Union should look. The position of Brussels is based on “competition and cooperation from Lisbon to Vladivostok.” The motivation for this position is as follows: competition mobilizes and drives any economy, and the economy of the EU is 8 times that of the emerging economy of the Eurasian Union. As far as cooperation is concerned, these two economic unions have potential for cooperation, particularly on the technical level. However, as one high-ranking official of the European Commission stated: “Russia does not like competition.” He noted, as an example, Russia’s retaliatory sanctions banning food imports from the EU. “We are not against the Eurasian Union,” the official said, but inspiring slogan “competition and cooperation from Lisbon to Vladivostok” cannot come to be without the liberalization of the economies of the two unions and compliance with WTO rules. 

“I often speak with Russian businessmen and they believe that the no market is as impenetrable as business in the EU,” said Vyacheslav Nikonov. “Europeans are not accustomed to symmetry. As far as the ‘small’ economy of the Customs Union is concerned, this is indisputable. However, over the past 20 years the dynamics in the improvement of the quality of life speaks in favor of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, where the standard of living is higher than in Croatia and Hungary, EU members, and Bulgaria, Romania and Latvia – new EU members – initially had higher living standards than the Customs Union countries but have now fallen markedly behind them.”

The opposing side from the EU responded in kind, noting that “the transparency of the US market implies the complementarity of the economies of partner companies, but the exchange of resources for finished products is not complementarity.” Another argument was that “the economy of Russia accounts for up to 70% of the economic potential of Eurasian Union and up to 85% of the economic potential of the CIS.” This explains the logic of Brussels’ tactics – the EU is also trying to get around the acceptance of the Eurasian Union and CIS as a unified partnership. With five of the countries – Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – it builds relations via the Eastern Partnership program, with Russia it has a special relationship and then individual relations with all other CIS countries.

Leonid Grigoriev, a professor of world economic and politics at the Higher School of Economics, said that the EU’s fragmented approach is flawed, noting that it pretends not to notice such regional alliances such as the CIS and Customs Union.

On the whole the participants of the discussion came to the conclusion that it is time for both the European Union and the Eurasian Union to “grow up”: they have learned to politely listen to each other but now it’s time to start hearing what the other side is saying. For example, some of the speakers from the EU have tried to assert that the Eurasian Union is Moscow’s response to the EU’s Eurasian Partnership initiative, which includes the CIS countries Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine and initially Belarus. Here the Russian experts are quick to point out that the Eastern Partnership was created in 2007, while the Eurasian Union was first initiated in 2002. Moreover, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbaev first mentioned this idea in 1993.

However, the reconciliatory tone of both sides – Brussels and Moscow – at least a desire to find some common ground for cooperation – was clear. If earlier Russia’s attempts to integrate post-Soviet space into an economic union or any other form of cooperation inevitably sparked suspicions in the US the Russia sought to recreate the “Evil Empire”, which was often repeated by EU politicians. Perhaps for the first time ever at the forum “Partnership with Russia in Europe” a representative of Brussels said: “We are not against the Eurasian Union.”

This means that the painful but much needed search for common ground between the EU and Eurasia continues.