The idea of the greater Eurasian partnership in the light of international law (Part 2)
The essence of the idea of the "Greater Eurasian Partnership", announced in 2016, is to strengthen integration cooperation between the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the states of the Asia-Pacific region (APR), relevant international organizations and other integration associations in the region. As a result, a regional free trade zone and a free investment zone with the participation of the EAEU and the EAEU member states should be created. International treaties and soft law are the main regulators of this process, and the very direction of such integration is explained by the international legal consciousness and the ongoing restructuring of the modern international legal order. The article reveals what practical actions and regulatory tools are used by the EAEU to achieve the Greater Eurasian Partnership (BEP) and what reserves of international legal regulation of this movement remain insufficiently used. The Great Eurasian Partnership is considered not only as a broad common free trade area, where customs tariffs on mutual trade goods are liberalized (eliminated); it is also a free investment zone, where barriers to direct investment and investors should be removed. The movement towards the BEP in the Asia-Pacific region is still mainly at the bilateral level - due to the entry into the corresponding integration association of individual states (i.e. by expanding the number of members) and the signing of agreements on free trade zones with these states. It is shown that the main international legal instruments for the convergence/integration of integration blocks include the principle of most-favored nation and exclusion from it, as well as the principle of granting national treatment. In the course of regional integration, new international legal treaty norms and principles, customs, and entire institutions of international law of economic integration are being formed. Future branches of international law are being formed - for example, "international social law", "international digital law", etc. And within the framework of the EAEU, in order to interface with other integration associations, this circumstance should be taken into account.