ABSTRACT
For continental Eurasian countries, transportation – and particularly rail – plays a pivotal role both for the domestic development and for the integration in regional and global markets. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the unified rail network was split into different national networks while integrated supply and value chains fragmented. Today, the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) represents the most serious attempt to institutionalize regional integration in continental Eurasia since the break-up of the Soviet system. The EAEU fosters the functional-operational reintegration of the transport and rail space as an instrument to support a coordinated industrial policy to develop new cross-regional value chains inside the bloc. These should allow for a major diversification of economies still largely dependent on primary resources. The EAEU common transport and custom space allows for a well-functioning transit bridge between China and Europe, but the effects on intra-bloc value and supply chains have fallen short of expectations thus far. Given the structure of mutual intra-EAEU trade and the few economic complementarities among EAEU members, efforts to reintegrate the transport and production space of continental Eurasia should be functional to greater integration with the external manufacturing powerhouses of Europe and, increasingly, Asia.
