ABSTRACT
The fifth European Union (EU) enlargement 1 of 2004 and 2007 to Eastern and Central Europe and the Mediterranean islands was one of the most significant transition events in the beginning of the 21st century. Twelve new states became members of the EU: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The EU now numbers 27 member states with a total population of more than 500 million. The new members are unified as a cluster, in part, because of their historical characteristics, as ten of the twelve were centralized economies under socialist governments until 1990. One objective with this new cluster was to assimilate with the fifteen older member EU states, commonly referred to as EU-15.
