The CES is broadly modelled on the Common Market, the forerunner of the EU, and will harmonise tariffs and trade regulations of the four countries that together account for 95% of the GDP of the 12 countries of the former Soviet Union.
There have been several attempts to unite these countries’ trade. One was the Commonwealth of Independent States, which was set up a week after Ukraine declared independence on December 1, 1991 at a meeting between Russian president Boris Yeltsin, Ukraine’s new president Leonid Kravchuk and Belarus’s first leader Stanislav Shushkevich. None of the attempts have come to much.
