Streamlining the BRICS and EAEU formats creates a mutually beneficial innovation ecosystem, which, through complementary capacities, provides participants with access to capital, new markets, and technologies, stimulating long-term structural growth.

Previously, we examined the concept defining the prospects for synchronizing BRICS and the EAEU. In the current piece, the author would like to continue studying the issue of aligning the Eurasian Economic Union and the expanded BRICS partnership.

The emphasis is placed on how the common framework of financial, payment, and institutional solutions transforms the intersection of both formats into a space for advanced technological and industrial development. The key challenge in this matter lies not in political declarations, but in the formation of applied tools that allow ideas from university laboratories and regional clusters to evolve into international projects.

Innovation Starts From Below

Real innovation is born not in government offices but in cities, technoparks, universities, and small enterprises. The task is to create instruments that will enable regional ideas to cross borders, attract package financing, and grow into international projects while maintaining speed and flexibility.

Financial Architecture

The New Development Bank (NDB), which traditionally finances infrastructure projects, should expand its mandate to include digital infrastructure, clean technologies, healthcare, urban development, and sustainable industry.

However, large development-bank loans alone are insufficient. Specialized BRICS and EAEU innovation funds, regional co-investment platforms, guarantee mechanisms, and blended-finance structures that combine public and private capital are also needed.

A practical model looks something like the following: a regional government provides land, a development institution assumes part of the risks, a commercial bank provides working capital, and a private investor contributes technology and market expertise. Such combinations make a project bankable and attractive to institutional players.

Currency swap arrangements and settlements in national currencies are also critically important. For small and medium-sized enterprises, this means reduced transaction costs and limited exchange-rate exposure, while for states, it reduces dependence on third currencies.

Payment Infrastructure and Growing Importance of Fintech

An innovative project cannot be developed if cross-border payments are slow, uncertain, or expensive. BRICS and EAEU partners should create interoperable payment channels and trusted digital settlement systems with broader use of national currencies. The key principle is not replacing state regulation, but ensuring seamless interaction, i.e., making national systems capable of communicating with one another.

Fintech can accelerate this process dramatically. Joint special experimental legal frameworks, so-called “regulatory sandboxes,” will allow banks, technology companies, and startups from different countries to test new payment solutions, smart contracts, and cross-border identification systems under controlled conditions. This will reduce legal uncertainty and hasten the adoption of best practices across the entire BRICS–EAEU space.

Non-financial Drivers of Success

Many projects fail not because of a lack of money, but because of a lack of partners, regulatory clarity, market access, or technical expertise. Therefore, non-financial instruments are no less important.

Joint incubators, technology-transfer platforms, regional innovation exchanges, and matchmaking systems that connect businesses, universities, and investors are required. Grant programs should support feasibility studies, prototypes, and pilot projects at the stage when they are not yet ready for commercial investment.

Mutual recognition of standards, coordinated certification procedures, and clearer intellectual property protection can significantly reduce the time and costs of entering new markets. Finally, networks of regional development agencies should enable companies from Maharashtra, Moscow, Tatarstan, Kazakhstan, the UAE, or South Africa to swiftly identify the right local partner.

Mutual Benefit as the Foundation of Lasting Partnership

The synchronization of the BRICS and EAEU formats is not a zero-sum game, but a multiplication of opportunities through their complementary capacities.

EAEU states gain access to the capital of the NDB and BRICS innovation funds, reducing dependence on traditional Western institutions; integrate the single Eurasian market into global technological chains as a predictable zone for investors; use BRICS to promote regional developments across multiple markets at once; and minimize currency risks for small and medium-sized businesses through settlements in national currencies.

BRICS countries, in turn, gain convenient access to the integrated market of the five EAEU states with unified certification rules, which multiplies the return on investment; rely on the functioning institutions of the EAEU when launching joint industrial and infrastructure projects in Eurasia; and expand access to transcontinental logistics corridors and technological startups, which, after being tested in EAEU regional incubators, can be scaled across the entirety of BRICS.

The consistent development of the instruments described transforms the intersection of BRICS and EAEU into a self-sustaining innovation ecosystem. Companies gain a transparent environment for raising capital, states gain diversified ties and growth in non-resource exports, and regional centres gain the opportunity to turn local ideas into globally significant projects. It is precisely this pragmatic, multi-level approach that can make the interaction between the two formats a long-term factor of structural growth for all participating countries.

Vlad Markin — Deputy Editor-in-Chief, New Eastern Outlook. Courtesy

https://journal-neo.su/2026/08/17/the-pragmatic-agenda-of-brics-and-the-eaeu-instruments-to-streamline-the-formats/