From the Council to the Union: The Transformation of Central and Eastern Europe’s Experience of Regional Integration

Building on the recent historiography on the Council of Mutual and Economic Assistance (CMEA), this chapter discusses the central and eastern European countries’ experience of regional economic integration and their transition away from CMEA and towards the European Communities/Union. It argues that this process started not in 1989 with the collapse of socialist regimes, but in the early 1970s, with their adoption of new economic strategy and the pursuit of rapprochement with Western Europe. This materialised in a state-led process of transformation which, in varied national degrees, opened the path of conceptualising and pursuing the “return to Europe” years before the 1990s.