Centre for Integration Studies of the Eurasian Development Bank published a reseach to assess the level of integration of 12 states of CIS region.

The project is based on analysing official statistics of the CIS countries over the period of 1999-2012. The analysis done covers a wide range of areas of the countries’ integration: from macroeconomic policies to student mobility.

Integration in the post-Soviet space progresses at an uneven pace in different domains, but the level of integration in the CIS has generally remained virtually unchanged for the last four years. That means that the permanent disintegration trend observed over two decades might have been reversed. At the same time, there has been no qualitative breakthrough yet, the reseach showed.

The findings of the research show that, judging by the overall level of integration with all the post-Soviet countries, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, and Tajikistan have been the three leaders since 2008.  Tajikistan, however, although the country was in the lead over the period of 2002-2008, demonstrated a lower level of integration in 2009-2012. At the same time, Georgia and Azerbaijan have improved their level of integration with the CIS region over the last four years.

Based on indicators relative to the countries’ GDP and population size, the leaders in certain aspects of integration with the CIS region include Belarus (trade), Kyrgyzstan (power exchange), Tajikistan (labour migration and agriculture), and Turkmenistan (education).