ABSTRACT
The context of assistance to transition Ensuring the success of the political, social and economic transition of the post-communist countries constitutes one of the greatest challenges con fronting the international community in the 1990s. Although these countries themselves carry primary responsibility for managing the transformations, Western assistance is aimed at securing the con tinuity of transition until it can be brought to a successful conclusion. Macro-financial and technical assistance, together with policy lending are important elements of external support. Their importance has been enhanced as a result of a relatively slow inflow of private foreign capital to Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Newly Independent States (NIS). They have experienced very limited success in capitalizing on the growth of the ‘emerging markets’ with CEE countries and the NIS together absorbing only 15% of total capital flows to developing countries from 1990 to 1995.1
The concept of assistance to transition has a short history; Western support to transition dates back only to 1989.
