Introduction

The collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 triggered a whole sequence of spectacular events we now look upon as being at the very core of Europe’s recent political history. The European Union (EU) saw it as an historical opportunity to unite the continent and extended the prospect of EU membership to ten countries from Central and Eastern Europe in 1993. It oversaw the transition to liberal democracy and market economy in the region and welcomed ten post-communist countries as full EU members in 2004 and 2007. It subsequently celebrated enlargement policy as its biggest foreign policy success to date.