Reforming CMEA integration

As intimated in Chapter 1, the CMEA has been the subject of numerous deliberations on how best it could be reformed and thus impart a new impetus to economic integration in Eastern Europe. The key forces leading up to this protracted examination, roughly since 1981, have been many, including: (1) the external imbalances, debt, and adjustment efforts of the early 1980s; (2) domestic economic disturbances; (3) inability to regain positive per capita growth on a sustainable basis; (4) lack of progress with SEI since the mid-1970s; (5) inconsistency between the trade and payments regimes of the CMEA and those required to support market-oriented reforms; (6) structural changes in CMEA relations (particularly the terms-of-trade fluctuations since 1975 and the restrictions on quantities of Soviet fuels and other raw materials that can be procured from within the TR regime); and (7) growing reluctance to honor the CMEA trade and payments regimes particulary to avoid arbitrage by private agents.