‘Europe’ and the Post-Soviet Republics Since 1991

Abstract

The disintegration of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 ushered in a new era in relations between all the members of a reunited continent. There were unprecedented changes in the domestic politics of the three Slavic republics, and in their relations with the states that had formerly been their military and ideological adversaries. Their efforts to negotiate a new relationship with ‘Europe’ were complicated by the far-reaching changes that had been taking place at the same time within what had originally been a European Economic Community, but which became a European Community and then a European Union in 1993 after the Maastricht Treaty had been ratified by all of its member states. The original six members became nine in 1973, ten in 1981, twelve in 1986, and fifteen in 1995. A much more fundamental process of change began in 2004 when eight formerly communist-ruled states (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and the three Baltic republics) became full members, as well as Malta and Cyprus, followed in 2007 by Bulgaria and Romania and in 2013 by Croatia; four other countries were officially recognised as candidates. A series of internal reforms had meanwhile established an economic and monetary union with a common currency — the euro — that began to circulate in 1999. A common foreign and security policy was introduced by the Maastricht Treaty, replacing a European political cooperation framework that had been established in 1986; and the 2007 Lisbon treaty gave the Union a ‘legal personality’, which meant it had the right to adopt laws and treaties.