ABSTRACT
Implementation of the 1989 agreement has been bedevilled by problems of succession and by the economic turmoil into which the former Soviet Union has plunged. The tribulations of the Soviet Union from 1989 through 1991, and of its successor states thereafter, have provided a second set of challenges to the governments of the Atlantic community. The European Community’s (EC) role in that sector of Europe's eastern frontier has been limited since 1990 to the provision of aid, either directly, as donor, or indirectly, as coordinator of the Atlantic community's programs. Central and Eastern Europe have been the focus of a remarkable intensification and diversification of the EC's external relations. For almost ten years following the end of World War II Western Europeans were preoccupied with economic recovery and military security, both of which, they speedily concluded, must be sought collectively within a transatlantic institutional framework.
