Pospelov: we see the EAEU’s interest in the CSTO PA’s lawmaking experience

At a SPIEF panel discussion The Progress and Challenges of Integration within the EAEU and the New Development Paradigm, Sergei Pospelov, Executive Secretary of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, spoke about the model lawmaking experience of the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly in the interests of building a secure “greater Eurasian partnership.”
“Transnational Eurasian projects a priori fall under the destructive scrutiny of various international, national, private, legal and illegal structures prone to resort to foreign policy pressure, trade wars, criminal influence and unfair competition,” the CSTO PA Executive Secretary noted. The key obstacle to further mutually beneficial integration processes is still the intention of some Western actors to maintain “the illusion of their own global dominance and their wish to oppose the objective realities of the new multipolar world order.”
Sergei Pospelov noted that if the EAEU had common standards of sanitary and epidemiological security and measures to respond to such threats, cooperation during the pandemic would not have to be suspended, consequently, the damage from the pandemic restrictions would be reduced. In such circumstances, a harmonized legal framework is one of the most important conditions for integration.
At the same time, the CSTO PA Executive Secretary stated that the EAEU is increasingly becoming an model of joint countering the challenges, threats and risks of our time, which is inevitably associated with the use of clear-cut rules, hence “restoring the role of international law and international universal institutions” based on the principles set out in the UN Charter and harmonization of geo-economic interests to form a “single growth framework.”
And in this context the internationally recognized experience of approximation and harmonization of the CSTO Member States’ legislation, with the Organization celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, becomes more interesting for the EAEU as well.
The model lawmaking mechanism is successfully used to form common legal norms, standards and terminology of the Member States.
Its main difference from the communitarian and conventional methods of integration, which are selectively applied, for example, in the EU, OSCE or NATO, is the use of the democratic principle of consensus-based decision-making, as well as the priority of national jurisdiction.
Since its establishment, the CSTO PA has adopted 69 model laws, model agreements and recommendations concerning both military sphere and other critical aspects of ensuring sustainable development.
For example, in the economic domain, the issues of ensuring energy security, combating corruption and hostile takeovers, protection of critical facilities and exclusive property rights have been addressed.
The CSTO PA Executive Secretary drew particular attention to the fact that establishment of a legal basis for a common secure ICT environment, with a number of model legal acts and recommendations within its framework, became a relevant area of harmonization of the CSTO Member States’ legislation.
“Taking into account the fact that digitalization and artificial intelligence already became part of our present, it is necessary to develop legislation for advanced development, to form a legal framework that allows creating opportunities for development and maintaining the unity of the security framework, including in the area of critical infrastructure and the use of artificial intelligence,” said Sergei Pospelov.
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