CEFTA info

As of 1 May 2007, the parties of the CEFTA agreement are: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, and UNMIK(a).

Former parties are Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland,Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Their CEFTA membership ended when they joined the EU.

Membership criteria:

Current criteria since Zagreb meeting in 2005:

WTO membership or commitment to respect all WTO regulations
any European Union Association Agreement
Free Trade Agreements with the current CEFTA members

Original CEFTA agreement was signed by Visegrad Group countries, that is by Poland, Hungary and Czech and Slovak Republics (at the time parts of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic) on 21 December 1992 in Krakow, Poland. It entered into force since July 1994. Through CEFTA, participating countries hoped to mobilize efforts to integrate Western European institutions and through this, to join European political, economic, security and legal systems, thereby consolidating democracy and free-market economics.

The agreement was amended by the agreements signed on 11 September 1995 in Brno and on 4 July 2003 in Bled. Slovenia joined CEFTA in 1996, Romania in 1997, Bulgaria in 1999, Croatia in 2003 and Macedonia in 2006.

CEFTA 2006 agreement

All of the parties of the original agreement had now joined the EU and thus left CEFTA. Therefore it was decided to extend CEFTA to cover the rest of the Balkan states, which already had completed a matrix of bilateral free trade agreements in the framework of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe. On 6 April 2006, at the South East Europe Prime Ministers Summit in Bucharest, a joint declaration on expansion of CEFTA to Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, United Nations Interim Administration on behalf Kosovo, Molodva, Serbia and Montenegro was adopted.

Accession of Ukraine has also been discussed. The new enlarged agreement was initialled on 9 November 2006 in Brussels and was signed on 19 December 2006 at the South East European Prime Ministers Summit in Bucharest. The agreement went into effect on 26 July 2007 for Albania, UNMIK, Macedonia, Moldova and Montenegro, and on 22 August for Croatia. Bosnia and Herzegovina ratified it on 6 September, while Serbia completed the final legal procedures on 24 September 2007. The agreement aims at establishing a free trade zone in the region by 31 December 2010.

Relations with EU

All former participating countries had previously signed association agreements with the EU, so in fact CEFTA has served as a preparation for full European Union membership. Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia joined the EU on 1 May 2004, with Bulgaria and Romania following suit on 1 January 2007. Croatia and Macedonia are also official candidate countries of the EU.

At the EU's recommendation, the future members prepared for membership by establishing free trade areas. A large proportion of CEFTA foreign trade is with EU countries.