"I’m thoroughly convinced that the future lies in the integrated regional structures," Khristenko said.
Within the next 15 years, around 60% of the world trade will be regulated by regional preferential agreements instead of WTO standards, he said, adding that "this is a sustainable trend, which reflects discontent towards WTO regulations and rules and impossibility to alter them."
Chairman of the Eurasian Commission also said that in recent decades the world has been influenced by two major trends — globalization and regionalization, which have been going hand in hand, sometimes "colliding with one another." However, the 2008 crisis revealed the problems, Khristenko said, adding that "it was not a financial crisis, but it was a crisis of globalization, as by that moment it had become clear that there were no effective mechanisms to manage the global processes." This defined the emerging of regional integrations, he added.
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