Transforming Economies and Societies in the Countries of East-Central Europe

The economic system of central planning, the political system based on a monopoly of power for one party and the close integration into the Soviet bloc all effectively ended in 1989. In the following years four former state socialist countries of east-central Europe – The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, henceforth CEECs - underwent far-reaching transformations. In general outline these transformations were very similar, bringing market economies, private ownership, political democracy and much greater openness to the outside world. The countries acquired, as acknowledged by acceptance as EU members from 2004, essentially similar features to those of the established democracies of western Europe. The transformations appeared to have been essentially successful. The aim of this chapter is to assess key features of this process, setting out some of the problems and unanswered questions hidden in such a straight forward account