Economic integration

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The degree of economic integration can be categorized into six stages:

1. Preferential trading area
2. Free trade area
3. Customs union
4. Common market
5. Economic and monetary union
6. Complete economic integration

Economic integration also tends to precede political integration. In fact, Balassa believed that supranational common markets, with their free movement of economic factors across national borders, naturally generate demand for further integration, not only economically (via monetary unions) but also politically--and, thus, that economic communities naturally evolve into political unions over time.