With goodwill a compromise between the EU’s Association Agreements and the Eurasian Customs Union could no doubt have been worked out. But that was not the mood on either side. The technical and economic issues of harmonizing two different economic blocs were overlaid by geopolitical tension whether Brussels acknowledged it or not. There was a choice to be made: Did the East European governments want to face west or east? Brussels let it be known that membership in Putin’s Eurasian Union was incompatible with an EU Association Agreement.
