Modern Europe - Commonwealth of Independent States

Commonwealth of Independent States

See also: Post-Soviet states#Regional organizations

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is a loose organization in which most former Soviet republics participate. A visa-free regime operates among members and a free-trade area is planned for the beginning of 2011. Ukraine is not an official member, but does participate in the organization. Some members are more integrated than others, for example Russia and Belarus form a Union State. In 2010 Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan formed a customs union and a single market (Common Economic Space) is scheduled to commence on 1 January 2012. The Presidents of Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan plan to create a Eurasian Union with a Eurasian Commission in 2015. A common currency is also planned, potentially to be named "evraz". Some other countries in the region are potential members of these organizations.

Read more about this topic:  Modern Europe

Famous quotes containing the words commonwealth of, commonwealth, independent and/or states:

    “We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.”
    —Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)

    “By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.”
    —Edmund Burke (1729–1797)

    “Men will say that in supporting their wives, in furnishing them with houses and food and clothes, they are giving the women as much money as they could ever hope to earn by any other profession. I grant it; but between the independent wage-earner and the one who is given his keep for his services is the difference between the free-born and the chattel.”
    —Elizabeth M. Gilmer (1861–1951)

    “It is impossible for a stranger traveling through the United States to tell from the appearance of the people or the country whether he is in Toledo, Ohio, or Portland, Oregon. Ninety million Americans cut their hair in the same way, eat each morning exactly the same breakfast, tie up the small girls’ curls with precisely the same kind of ribbon fashioned into bows exactly alike; and in every way all try to look and act as much like all the others as they can.”
    —Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe (1865–1922)