CHAPTER 01

INTRODUCTION

1.1. BACKGROUND
Just twenty years ago, the dismantling of Cold War division in Europe began with parliamentary changes in Poland (Bochniarz and Cohen 2006). These changes initiated a domino effect in transformation of other Central and Eastern European countries (CEE); the transformation of Romania, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria was soon followed by sweeping changes in Russia and Central Asia, affecting more than 400 million people (Chandler 2000). Needless to say, however, the transformation of Central and Eastern Europe near the climax of the 80s took the European Community (EC) by surprise. In the pre1989 era, the EC exercised only a limited relationship with CEE countries and showed no serious interest for a European project of political and economic integration that would include any of the CEE states. According to Gower (1999), this inability to foresee the potential of the CEE region strongly reflects the ineffectiveness in the EC policies. Shortly after transition to democracy, ten CEE states (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) declared their utmost desire to join the “family of Europe” (Andonova 2004). As the idea of EU membership for these newly independent democracies in Central and Eastern Europe started to gain some serious ground in the early 90s, the debate over enlargement and its economic, social and

The first chapter is like a long foreword of the dissertation. It introduces the dissertation document (report) and the research behind it in sufficient detail. Its purpose is to provide the reader with all fundamental information regarding the research and its report. It is usually about a tenth of the total count of the study. It usually has the following sections. o Background o Research Statement  Research Questions 