A. General Information
EAEU Transboundary Trust Environment
B. Lessons Learned
EAEU members aim to form a unified regional cyberspace to streamline trade and foster sustainable economic development through a transboundary environment of trust. The Integrated Information System (IIS) links state information resources and systems.
(1) increasing the efficiency of electronic interaction within the EAEU; (2) creation of single cyberspace with interstate electronic interaction within the EAEU and beyond; and (3) creation of favorable and trusting conditions for the implementation of the legally significant interstate exchange of data and electronic documents between individuals, legal personalities and officials, state authorities, and governments of member states, officials, and employees of the EAEU
Establish a transboundary environment of trust to ease access to information, ensure safety and efficient information systems
Digitalization of trade processes (data exchange, information access, electronic authentication)
Technical components of the environment include four environmental sectors and four service sectors. The environmental sectors are: (1) the national environment of trust; (2) the environment of trust of the EAEU; (3) the environment of trust of the member states; and (4) the environment of trust of a third party. The service sectors are: (1) sub-systems of IIS; (2) services of trust of member states; (3) services of trust of a third party; and (4) services of a competent official body of a member state or a third party (on the national level). As for the non-technical components, the analysis of the EAEU official documents was made to highlight them, so the following list is debatable. It includes: (1) principles of the transboundary environment of trust development, including international legal principles; (2) basics of the IIS set in the Treaty on the EAEU 2015; (3) legal framework developing by the Eurasian Economic Commission; and (4) national legal regulations of the EAEU member-states and third parties.
The transboundary environment of trust, established within EAEU, is an example of accumulating experience and knowledge among regional unions, members of which are equally interested in both facilitating and simplifying transboundary cyber services and giving to them a unified legal framework. It is bigger than bilateral agreement and cooperation – because it gives the possibility to involve third parties – and, mostly, is concentrated on trade and economy, not political issues. Such a kind of initiatives and unions have the potential to promote the national supremacy of one of the members if the technical possibility of a state becomes more developed. This happens with some IT services and products when the pioneers of technology became monopolists and started to dictate the policy of legal development to the consumers as well as to the jurisdictions these consumers belong to. Therefore, international law, in general, is the most prominent way to not only promote a culture of online security and safety, empowering users, and encouraging national, regional and international cybersecurity strategies to protect users, but to also develop the economy and financial system, and ease the process of transboundary trade. On the other hand, when negotiating between the members, the need arises to refer to the higher authorities and having recommendations from the bodies such as UNCEFACT/UNECE, UNCITRAL and others that are built on the non-discrimination principle, will be more beneficial. The concept of the centralized model of the transboundary environment is based on international regulation, including documents of UNCITRAL, and includes all the technical and legal guarantees to provide fair trade and fair competition, as well as equality and non-discrimination. However, in practice, there is a big gap between both technical and non-technical components of the environment. The model faces all the issues that other services or environments of the same nature do: the regulation does not follow the technology. Here we are not speaking about progress (even though it should be mentioned) but the typical issues of such kinds of complexes. On the contrary, the decentralized model fills the gap with technology. We understand blockchain as a legal phenomenon where the basic principles of law (here, it means trades and economy) are embodied in the architecture of computing. Unfortunately, the decentralized model excludes the state as an entity of supremacy, which the centralized model does not, so it is unpredictable when it will be implemented in international trade. In addition, the possible risks of it are still more speculative than real, which does not attract the main actors of such concepts as EAEU suggests. However, as the transboundary environment of trust includes not only goods and services, the decentralized model also should be taken into account as a possible topic for UNCITRAL's future agenda.