Voluntary Economic Integration

1. Multilateral international economic agreements, treaties and organizations (based on regional location; prior military, mutual defence treaties; common language; common political heritage; common ideologies, or any combination of these) whose purpose is to create a common market between members and to achieve common economic domestic and foreign policies.

2. Economic integration in varying degrees has been the goal of many organizations, such as EEC, ASEAN, the British Commonwealth, bodies (as in Scandinavia, Africa, Latin America and among the Arab States). COMECON, however, dominated by the Soviet Union, achieves a partly involuntary economic integration among the captive European nations who are its members, for example, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, who are forced to trade with the Soviets on unfavourable terms.