ABSTRACT
Over the last 20 years, the region of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has become notable worldwide as the poster-child of historical transformation from a totalitarian communist-party-dominated system with a centrally planned economy to democracy and market economy. These political and economic reforms were accompanied by significant environmental reforms and the introduction of radical institutional changes that affected all aspects of public life. For this reason they are often called a systemic transformation with certain characteristic features of CEE (Archibald et al., 2009; Dabrowski et al., 2001) different than Russian or Chinese reform models (Stieglitz, 1999). The successful implementation of CEE transformation inspired many leaders outside of that region, particularly in Eastern and Southern Europe, and led those countries to join the European Union (EU) in 2004 (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia; adding Bulgaria and Romania in 2007). This way the major requirements of the systemic transformation were completed while being anchored to the EU democratic governance system and a mature market economy. Despite cultural, economic and ethnic differences, these ten new EU member states (EU-10) have many features common to other transforming economies, particularly those from the former Soviet Union. However, they experienced much better economic performance, significant environmental improvements and more political stability than the rest of the former Soviet republics (Archibald et al., 2009; Bochniarz and Radzilowski, 2003; Gemma, 2000).
