Monetary Unions of Past and Present: Experience and Lessons for Eurasian Integration

Long-term reference point of integration’s development for the countries of the Customs union of Single Economic
Space of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia is cooperation in the monetary sphere. Practice of functioning of the monetary unions
of the past and the present testify to ones unions extend and transform to larger alliances (The German union, EMU),
but others, don’t cope with the disintegrate reasons and cease to exist (The Austro-German Monetary Union, The Latin
Monetary Union, The Scandinavian Currency Union). For identifi cation of the steady monetary unions classifi cation on the
basis of criteria of subject structure, a role of the Central Bank, character of currencies, distributions of losses (benefi ts),
concentration of the monetary power and others is carried out them, their general and special signs are allocated.
Based on the historical analysis it is proved that the national monetary unions have the greatest stability as their
formation is supported with a political unity. As the reasons of disintegration of the international monetary unions and their
collapse were allocated: dissociation of a monetary policy of national banks; breach of obligations of partners of the union;
absence of the uniform monetary institute that defi ne currency policy of the union; domination of national interests over the
union’s interests; economic differentiation of the countries; external shocks. Есоnоmic аnd Моnetaгу Union (EMU) – the
unique international monetary union. As a result of crisis, its evolution is connected with strengthening of supranational
signs. Therefore, stability of the modern monetary unions demands from the states of much bigger economic and political
integration and coordination of actions, in comparison with the currency unions of the past.
Thus, the historical experience prove that the strong political will of its participants which agree to lose part of the
national sovereignty is necessary for successful implementation of the project of future Eurasian Economic Union; right
choice of the type of the monetary (supranational/international, centralized/decentralized, symmetric/asymmetric), answering
to long-term goals of the Eurasian integration and economic convergence of the participating countries. The potential risk
of disintegration for The Eurasian Economic Union is caused by dominating economy of the Russian Federation and the
differentiated structure of participants.