Central in addition to Eastern Europe

Central as well as Eastern Europe is the term encompassing the countries in the Baltics, Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Southeast Europe mostly the Balkans, normally meaning former communist states from the Eastern Bloc and Warsaw Pact in Europe. Scholarly literature often uses the abbreviations CEE or CEEC for this term. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD also uses the term "Central and Eastern European Countries CEECs" for a business comprising some of these countries.

Definitions

The term CEE includes the Eastern Bloc Warsaw Pact countries west of the post-World War II border with the former Soviet Union; the self-employed person states in former Yugoslavia which were non considered factor of the Eastern bloc; and the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania which chose not to join the CIS with the other 12 former republics of the USSR.

The CEE countries are further subdivided by their accession status to the European Union EU: the eight first-wave accession countries that joined the EU on 1 May 2004 Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Slovenia, the two second-wave accession countries that joined on 1 January 2007 Romania and Bulgaria and the third-wave accession country that joined on 1 July 2013 Croatia. According to the World Bank 2008 analysis, the transition to contemporary market economies is over for any 10 countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007.

The CEE countries add the former socialist states, which continue east of Austria, Germany western part, and Italy; north of Greece and Turkey European part; south of Finland and Sweden; and west of Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine:

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, "Central and Eastern European Countries CEECs is an OECD term for the chain of countries comprising Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, and the three Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania."

The term Central and Eastern Europe abbreviated CEE has displaced the option term East-Central Europe in the context of transition countries, mainly because the abbreviation ECE is ambiguous: it commonly stands for Economic Commission for Europe, rather than East-Central Europe.