The Agreement on the Establishment of a Free Trade Area was signed in Moscow on 15 April 1994, at the Council of Heads of State of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Signatories: the 12 post-Soviet CIS member states. Authentic text: Russian, in a single original. Depositary: the Archive of the Government of the Republic of Belarus. Provisional application from the day of signature; entry into force, under Article 23, on the third notification that interstate procedures have been completed — 30 December 1994 for the states that had done so. Reservations are not permitted. It is not the Marrakesh Agreement, signed the same day, and not the CIS treaty of 18 October 2011.

Article 1 describes the agreement as the first stage of the Economic Union envisaged by the treaty of 24 September 1993: gradual removal of customs duties, charges with equivalent effect and quantitative restrictions, elimination of other barriers to the movement of goods and services, a settlements system, coordination of trade policy and legislative harmonisation as far as needed for the area. The territory of application is the customs territories of the parties. Interpretation follows the 1969 Vienna Convention. Exemption lists and rules of origin are not transcribed here as a tariff handbook.

Article 3 provides, at the level of principle, that customs duties and quantitative restrictions shall not apply in mutual trade, with exceptions in bilateral documents. Freedom of transit (Article 10) applies immediately. Article 17 records the intention to conclude a separate agreement on services. Supervision is coordinated by the Interstate Economic Committee of the Economic Union. Accession is open to any CIS member state, by a separate agreement. Withdrawal requires six months' written notice.

The Protocol of 2 April 1999, also in Moscow, replaced the phrase "first stage of the Economic Union" with "creation of a free-trade area" and sought a multilateral regime in place of the bilateral web. Turkmenistan did not sign it. Russia notified provisional application of the 1994 agreement without notifying entry into force of the Protocol. Georgia, after leaving the CIS in 2009, remained a party to this treaty, which is open to any state.

The register source, a JSTOR article, is not the instrument. The official text is that of the CIS Executive Committee. Cover: the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, the usual venue of the Council of Heads of State; no claim is made to the hall. Wikimedia Commons, free licence.

Sources consulted: Commonwealth of Independent States Agreement on the Establishment of a Free Trade Area; Соглашение о создании зоны свободной торговли.