Introduction to ‘Central Europe’

Abstract

The purpose of the book is to revisit the role and place of Central Europe in contemporary regional and international politics. Since the end of the Cold War and up until the end of the 1990s, the almost forgotten concept of Central Europe received enormous attention in the literature. Analyses that have focused on the transition of former Communist states and their rediscovery of their ‘Central European identity’ were abundant, and examples of such analyses will often be referred to in this volume as well. However, the present-day Central Europe and its neighbourhood are very different from the Central Europe and its neighbourhood that were discussed more than a decade ago. During the last 20 years, the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) enlargement has touched the Balkans and stretched all the way to the Baltic borders of the former Soviet Union. The ‘Big Bang’ enlargement of the European Union (EU) happened in 2004, and it was soon followed by Romania and Bulgaria gaining their membership as well. For these reasons alone it is important to return to the debate about Central Europe and check the relevance of the notion in light of these changed circumstances. But there is more to it, as some Central European institutions, such as the Visegrad Group (V4), which was pronounced more or less dead as late as 2005 (The Economist 2005), have recently seen a notable revival.