Regional Policy in the EU Mode of Regionalism: Implications for Asian Integration

Regional Policy continues to be a central part of the overall framework of the European Union’s (EU) approach to developing a supranational political and economic entity. It accounts for more than one third of the EU’s expenditure and involves complex challenges of redistributing resources from subnational regions in some nations to poorer regions in other nation states. What can nations in other parts of the world that are engaged in pursuit of greater integration learn from the EU’s experience, and to what extent are such understandings relevant to other nations? This paper will review both these questions, with specific attention to the Asian context. It will consider some examples of the interest in subnational regional policy within specific Asian countries, with a view to exploring the potential redistribution from richer to poorer regions in Asia.

THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE INTEGRATION OF CENTRAL ASIA

Today socio-political processes in the world pose a number of urgent problems for the region and countries. Along with governments, civil society is also actively involved in many issues, including security, poverty prevention, countering global threats, climate change and solving environmental problems, as well as ensuring democracy and the rule of law. As states participate in mutual political cooperation and integration, civil society will also expand its participation in these processes based on the principle of social partnership. In this context, a truly civil society plays an important role in the process of cooperation, including the integration of the Central Asian region.This scientific article analyzes the results of a sociological survey conducted among scientists and researchers working in all countries of the region, on the topic "The role and participation of civil society in the context of Central Asian integration

Foreign trade in agricultural products of the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Armenia: Euro-Asian integration processes

The paper analyzes the foreign trade of agro-industrial products of the Republic of Serbia with the Republic of Armenia during the period from 2008 to 2017 to identify current problems and assess the prospects for further development of export expansion. The Republic of Serbia exported agro-industrial products from the Republic of Armenia, but there was no import. That represents a long-term characteristic of the Serbian economy. Based on the statistical research, a systematic assessment of the depth of economic cooperation in the mutual exchange of agricultural products is given, and recommendations are given to develop Serbia and Armenia's economic ties.

Kazakhstan and Prospects for Regional Cooperation in Central Asia

A number of factors hinder regional cooperation in Central Asia. They include multidirectional foreign policy priorities of the countries of the region and unresolved acute regional problems (territorial borders, water and energy, environmental, transport and communication, agricultural and food). The ruling elites of the countries of the region may fail to resist the temptation to channel population's dissatisfaction with the difficult socio-economic situation into the mainstream of interethnic and interstate conflicts. Therefore, there can be no question of Central Asian integration.

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Regional Integration in Asia

In Asia, SAARC (South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation), ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) and GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) are being considered as an active regional trading blocs although East Asian integration is on primary cooperation stage and BIMSTEC is treated as organised sub-regional trading bloc. The GCC has completed all criterion of economic integration except introduction of a single currency and ASEAN is advancing its optimum stage of monetary integration but the advancement of SAARC is halted by the shock of non-cooperation from Pakistan. Therefore, contribution of GCC in integrating Asian bloc is to scrutinise in a new outlook. In this paper, the author endeavours to show the impact of economic integration of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on the Asian economic integration in the sense that the process of integration of GCC with SAARC and ASEAN can accelerate the criterion of Asian integration process. Therefore, the author used cointegration and vector error correction model among the indicators of trade integration of exports such as Asian export share, intra export share of GCC, export concentration index of GCC, ASEAN’s export with GCC and SAARC’s export with GCC during 1995-2019. Similarly, the author applied same methodology among the trade indicator of imports such as Asian import share, intra import share of GCC, import concentration index of GCC, ASEAN’s import with GCC and SAARC’s import with GCC during the specified period. The findings revealed that Asian export share has long run significant causalities with SAARC and ASEAN export shares to GCC. Intra export share of GCC has long run causalities with SAARC and ASEAN export shares to GCC. The export concentration index of GCC has significant long run causalities with SAARC and ASEAN export shares to GCC respectively. Even, the short run causalities from export concentration index of GCC to intra export share of GCC, export share of ASEAN and SAARC with GCC and the short run causality from ASEAN export share with GCC to export share of Asia and from intra export share of GCC to export share of ASEAN with GCC were strictly observed. Again, the import share of Asia has long run causalities with the import shares of ASEAN and SAARC with GCC. The intra import share of GCC has long run causalities with the import shares of ASEAN and SAARC with GCC and the import concentration index of GCC has long run causalities with the import shares of ASEAN and SAARC with GCC respectively. The intra import share of GCC has short run causalities with import share of Asia, import concentration index of GCC and import share of ASEAN with GCC respectively. The import concentration index has short run causality with the import share of Asia. The import share of SAARC with GCC has short run causality with import share of ASEAN with GCC. The cointegration and vector error correction among Asian GDP, sum of intra export and import shares of GCC, sum of export and import shares of ASEAN with GCC, and sum of export and import shares of SAARC with GCC during 1995-2019 indicated that the GDP of Asia has long run causalities with the sum of intra export and import shares of GCC, the sum of export and import shares of ASEAN with GCC and the sum of export and import shares of SAARC with GCC and even they have short run causalities also. All these observations can justify that GCC has great impact on Asian economic integration process associated with SAARC and ASEAN.