ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a comparative analysis of two specific borders and border regions which determined the political, economic, humanitarian and spatial development in Europe in the second half of the twentieth and at the beginning of the twenty-first century. One is the former Iron Curtain region, which formed a definitive political and economical dividing line in the Cold War era; the other is the new external border of the European Union which emerged in 2004 and 2007. The former Iron Curtain emerged after World War II, the new eastern external border after 2004– the ‘Big Bang’ Eastern enlargement. The former Iron Curtain had a political dividing and isolating function for 50 years. In the case of the former Iron Curtain, the isolation was imposed essentially by the Soviet Union and was the consequence of the Cold War. It could be said that, along the former Iron Curtain, there were dramatic political problems but fewer ethnic ones.
