ABSTRACT
The question has oft been asked in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries 1 : ‘What marks the end of transition from the planned economy to the free market?’ For some, the answer was the accession to the European Union (EU), in 2004 and 2007, whereas others 2 saw the end only when functional fiscal institutions and social welfare measures were in place. However, irrespective of time horizons, transition no longer means a return to a nineteenth-century liberal society model or even a mid-twentieth-century welfare state, moderating the deficits of capitalism. Transition now takes the meaning of a broader movement towards the twenty-first-century objective of transformation from an industrial to a knowledge-based society that is a common objective for all countries around the world. From this perspective, the CEE countries’ transition is part of a broader global movement of ‘creative reconstruction’.
