Eastern European Economies

CHAPTER 3

Eastern Europe Regional Bloc: CEE and CIS

The future economic growth of Eastern European countries will depend largely on the European Union, which received 80 percent of Eastern Europe’s exported goods in 2008.

—Alejandro Foxley

Introduction

As discussed in earlier chapters, the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)¹ bloc is a generic term that defines the group of countries in central, south-east, northern, and eastern Europe, commonly meaning former communist states in Europe. It is in use since the collapse of the Iron Curtain² in 1989 to 1990, when more than 20 nations emerged from the isolation that had largely hidden them, and its citizens, from the rest of the world for more than 4 decades. As argued by Lerman, Csaki, and Feder (2004), ...