it crosses the threshold of 0.70, which Kyrgyzstan accomplished in 1994 (the first CIS country to do so) and Romania in 1998 (and Russia, for reference, in 1996). Real wages during the 1990s 1990s lowest GDP During the 1990s, the GDP of the transition economies declined sharply relative to its 1989 level. However, this decline varied considerably from country to country: for some, GDP bottomed out at or over 75% of its 1989 level, while for others, it plummeted to below a third. The worst among the 15 post-Soviet countries was represented by Georgia in the year 1994, with 25.4% of its 1989 GDP. The lowest decline was represented by the Czech Republic, with 84.6% of its 1989 GDP in the year 1992. Uzbekistan had the highest GDP bottom among the post-Soviet countries, with 83.4% of its 1989 level in the year 1995. Albania experienced the worst decline among the non-Soviet countries of the defunct Warsaw Pact, its GDP amounting to only 60.4% of its 1989 level in 1992. The absolute worst was to be found in the former Yugoslavia - war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina's GDP declined to only 12% of its 1989 level. All the transition countries for which such data is available are listed below (countries in bold bottomed out at a higher level than the U.S. during the Great Depression, when 1933 American GDP was 73.4% of its 1929 level): Debt defaults The EU candidate countries plus Russia (1998) Between 16 December 1991 and 10 June 1996, a total of 10 transition countries signed Europe Association Agreements (EAs), these agreements acknowledging their ultimate objective of joining the EU. The ten countries were subsequently divided. The five states deemed to have made the most progress (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Estonia) - constituting the Luxembourg Group - were invited in July 1997 to begin accession negotiations (these began in March 1998). The remaining five countries (Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Latvia and Lithuania) - constituting the Helsinki Group - joined the Luxembourg Group in December 1999. Industrial indicators Deindustrialization Following the collapse of Communism, the transition economies underwent various degrees of deindustrialization. Deindustrialization varied widely across the region, both in terms of when the fall in output bottomed out and how steep the decline in output was. The extremes were represented by Uzbekistan, where industrial output bottomed out in 1992 at 96.4% of its 1989 level, and Bosnia,