The evolving HIV landscape in Central and Eastern Europe: Progress, gaps, and future directions-part II.

Cross-national patterns of probable complex PTSD in post-communist Europe: A network analysis of five countries.

Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014, followed by the full-scale invasion in 2022, drastically altered Poland’s security landscape. Poland became a frontline state and a major provider of aid to Ukraine. This tested relations between allied states, ultimately demonstrating the willingness of Western partners to secure allies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). This article analyses the shifts in perceptions of the EU and NATO in the immediate aftermath of Russian aggression. To achieve this, we examine how relationships within both organizations have been framed, and how the unjust use of power and hierarchy have been perceived. Role theory was employed to capture the contestation of governmental framing by public opinion leaders. Empirically, we analysed approximately 2,500 articles in four leading Polish newspapers covering a broad political spectrum. We demonstrate that the growing contestation in Polish foreign policy is most evident in assessments of the EU and its relations with Western allies, particularly France and Germany. In contrast, relations within NATO and with the United States were not matters of significant political contention. Our results confirm that the clear power asymmetry within NATO based on military power was more widely accepted, while the perceived hierarchies within the EU were contested and opposed.

ABSTRACT This article examines how pedagogies of the home shape the educational experiences and identity formation of Central and Eastern European (CEE) migrant youth in the UK. Situated within the racialized politics of Brexit, it moves beyond deficit-oriented accounts of CEE migration to foreground the everyday knowledge practices, affective labour and relational resources cultivated within families and communities. Drawing on Delgado Bernal’s pedagogies of the home and Yosso’s community cultural wealth framework and based on 20 case studies in England and Scotland, the study shows how young people mobilize language, peer networks, religion, and family values to develop resilience, cultural competence, and strategies of resistance to marginalization.

ABSTRACT The Russia – Ukraine war and ongoing conflicts involving Iran in the Middle East have highlighted Europe’s vulnerability to fossil fuel dependency. This article analyzes the potential for accelerating the adoption of Small, Affordable Electric Vehicles (SAEVs), particularly in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), as a strategy to enhance energy security and help the European Union (EU) meet its decarbonization targets. We examine the current state of the European automotive sector, the challenges and opportunities faced by CEE countries, and the prospects for transitioning to SAEVs in these regions. Two successful case studies of SAEV adoption are presented to illustrate the potential benefits of this transition. Based on these insights, we offer policy recommendations to support decision-makers in accelerating the adoption of SAEVs and achieving broader environmental and energy security goals.

ABSTRACT We investigate volatility contagion in the sovereign bond markets of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) EU members. Using a hierarchical volatility decomposition, we separate local currency bond yield volatility into global, regional, and local components. Results show that global factors dominate in most non-EMU CEE countries, while EMU members are also significantly exposed to regional influences. During the early phase of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, local factors temporarily accounted for most of the volatility in non-EMU markets. These findings underscore the heterogeneity of volatility drivers in CEE bond markets and have implications for policymakers, investors, and risk managers.

ABSTRACT Nuclear energy is undergoing a global resurgence driven by rising energy demand resulting from the triple-axis transition (i.e. green, digital, and defence transitions). However, its dual nature presents a complex challenge and a significant policy dilemma: nuclear power offers a low-carbon, reliable baseload energy source, but it is also linked to defence through its potential use in the development of weapons of mass destruction. This study examines the Central and Eastern European (CEE) energy mix by integrating a Bibliometric Systematic Literature Review and econometric modelling that enable a robust research framework. The research findings reveal the region’s strong dependence on fossil fuels, highlighting the need for diversification. Increasing uranium demand, growing geopolitical risks, and AI-driven energy needs intensify pressures, requiring European policymakers to reassess nuclear energy’s strategic role amid growing energy security uncertainty.

The aim of the paper is to investigate the main differences between the accounting systems in Romania and Poland, since the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have undergone many political, structural, social and economic changes in the last 50 years. The research methodology is based on a critical analysis of specialized works that have developed a professional framework, on the analysis of Polish and Romanian accounting standards, respectively on the analysis of legal acts necessary to complete the general accounting. On the basis of deductive reasoning, the paper reveals key determinants and differences of accounting frameworks in Romania and Poland. The paper demonstrates that it is crucial to consider economic and cultural differences in comparative international accounting research. Our choice was influenced by the lack of research on our country, although other CEE countries benefit from a significant presence. Notably, we have discovered a broad research on Poland's state of economy which has been compared to Czehia, Slovakia, Hungary and so on. Therefore, it would be a beneficial intake in our field to discover the differences in comparison to Romania.

Purpose The innovation activities of firms are shaped by a variety of barriers that can, paradoxically, either stimulate or hinder their innovation performance. Collaboration among ecosystem partners is often essential for navigating these challenges, particularly in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, where persistent shortages of resources and skills make external support crucial. Despite its importance, collaboration does not uniformly yield positive outcomes and can exert a double-edged influence on innovation processes. This study examines whether innovation barriers are transformed into product and process innovations through different types of collaboration and how these mediation patterns unfold in catching-up CEE economies. Design/methodology/approach This study uses Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze how innovation barriers influence the innovativeness of firms, using a sample of 4,230 firms across eight CEE states. Firm-level data are drawn from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) and capture innovation barriers, product and process innovations, and three collaboration types: private market, value chain and public research. The model focuses on the mediating role of these collaboration types and includes a multi-group comparison between firms collaborating only domestically and those engaged with foreign partners. Findings Our findings show that value-chain ties consistently channel innovation barriers into process innovation, while product innovations require public research linkages to be present. Interestingly, we show that private market ties can boost process innovation but also play an unsuccessful role in mediating innovation barriers to new products. When considering firms' international engagement, those linked with foreign cooperation partners benefit more from the public research route to product novelty, while domestically oriented firms rely more strongly on value-chain collaboration for process upgrading. Originality/value This paper contributes by treating collaboration as a partner-specific mediating mechanism rather than a generic enabler and by introducing a threefold distinction between private market, value-chain and public research collaboration. It provides context-sensitive evidence from underexplored CEE innovation systems on how distinct collaboration modes convert innovation barriers into product and process innovations and how these effects differ between nationally and internationally oriented firms.

This article examines the institutional role of migrant non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the development and implementation of minority rights across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Drawing on policy documents, monitoring reports, and institutional publications produced by the European Union and major international organizations, the study analyses how migrant NGOs function as intermediary actors situated between state institutions and minority communities. Rather than relying on primary fieldwork, the research adopts a document-based comparative approach to assess the extent to which migrant NGOs contribute to the institutionalization of minority rights through advocacy, service provision, and participation in consultative mechanisms. The findings indicate that migrant NGOs in the CEE region occupy a multifaceted institutional position that extends well beyond formal representation, encompassing policy influence, implementation of integration programmes, and the advancement of cultural and linguistic rights. Their institutional capacity and operational autonomy, however, vary considerably across national contexts, shaped by divergent legal frameworks, configurations of state–civil society relations, and trajectories of democratic governance. The article contends that migrant NGOs constitute critical components of the evolving civil sphere in post-socialist societies, mediating between international minority rights norms and domestic institutional practices. Through a synthesis of EU integration reports, Council of Europe monitoring mechanisms, and NGO assessments, the study contributes to scholarly debates on civil society and minority rights by identifying the structural conditions under which migrant organizations emerge as effective institutional actors. The article concludes with policy recommendations aimed at strengthening civil society’s role in minority rights governance across the region.

Sustainable development is a core objective of European Union (EU) policy, making energy transition performance a key analytical and policy issue. This article examines the role of energy and the energy sector in Poland’s sustainable development through an indicator-based empirical assessment for 2010–2024 in a comparative EU context. In addition to the national analysis, Poland’s trajectories are positioned against the EU-27 average and selected Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies in order to assess whether the observed changes represent relative progress, convergence, or persistent lagging. The study combines a harmonised indicator framework with formal trend tests, structural-break analysis, a simplified additive LMDI decomposition, and exploratory cross-indicator analysis. The results show strong improvement in macro-level energy efficiency, continued growth in the renewable-energy share, and a reduction in the emissions intensity of energy use, while also revealing an asymmetric transition pattern in which transport remains less stable and energy self-reliance declines. From a comparative perspective, Poland performs relatively strongly in economy-wide, energy-efficiency improvement, but less favourably in renewable-energy deployment than the EU-27 average and the selected CEE comparators. Overall, the findings point to measurable progress in efficiency and decarbonisation alongside persistent tensions between sectoral adjustment, renewable energy expansion, and energy security.

The global digital transformation and increasing geopolitical instability have fundamentally changed the role of IT consulting, shifting it from a supportive function to a core driver of economic resilience. This is particularly evident in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region, which has emerged as a key technological hub over the last fifteen years. The study employs a comparative analysis of the IT consulting markets in Ukraine, Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic during 2010–2025. The research methodology is based on a systematic review of market dynamics, including the number of registered companies, revenue per specialist, and the evolution of service delivery models. The author uses data from international analytical platforms (Statista, PwC) and industry reports (IT Ukraine Association, N-iX) to identify regional patterns. The analysis identifies three distinct waves of IT consulting transformation: the post-crisis recovery (2010–2014), the digital transformation boom (2015–2021), and the current shift toward adaptive and resilient strategies (2022–2025). The study categorizes three dominant regional models. The Western European model (Germany, France) focuses on Industry 4.0 and strategic IIoT consulting. The Central European model (Poland, Romania) leverages EU institutional support to function as a technological integrator. The Ukrainian model, defined as “Resilient Consulting,” has unique characteristics shaped by extreme security challenges, leading to the emergence of world-class expertise in MilTech and cybersecurity. Financial metrics reveal a performance gap: the Czech Republic leads in revenue per specialist ($77.5k) due to high-value industrial consulting, while Ukraine is rapidly increasing its consulting share from 12% to 18.4% despite wartime risks. The findings suggest that the Ukrainian IT sector is undergoing a qualitative transition from staff augmentation to solution architecture. By the end of 2025, the share of consulting in Ukraine's IT export structure is projected to reach 22%. The study concludes that Ukraine's strategic priority until 2030 should be adopting Western intellectual property standards and further integrating MilTech solutions into global security chains.

Abstract This Symposium analyses how European Union (EU) member states have adjusted domestic policies in response to the evolving governance of the single market since the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent EU shocks. Confronted with new opportunities and constraints, countries have adopted diverse forms of domestic agency that have, in turn, reshaped the de facto governance of the single market. We focus on Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), where such forms of agency have been novel and unexpected, given the region's high transnational dependency and their traditional position as passive EU rule‐takers. We show that CEE states have engaged creatively with EU‐level changes, often mobilising actors beyond central governments to tackle domestic economic challenges. This editorial introduction traces the evolving interdependence between CEE agency and the EU's institutional regime, whilst the four empirical contributions examine how CEE countries have leveraged new EU incentives and limitations in practice, with a focus on the manufacturing and finance sectors. Our findings reveal a critical tension: the EU's governance shifts since 2008 have produced a hybrid regulatory framework that combines tighter supranational constraints in some domains with expanded scope for adaptive and experimental domestic agency in others. CEE states have leveraged this uneven regulatory space in creative ways, but outcomes in terms of economic upgrading and convergence remain mixed and uncertain. We conclude that this hybrid governance framework risks entrenching fragmentation within the single market and reinforcing the socio‐economic challenges of the EU's Eastern periphery. By questioning assumptions of minimal CEE agency in managing transnational dependencies and by identifying the specific forms of domestic agency that have emerged in the region since 2008, the Symposium underscores the need to balance national experimentation with strategic economic cohesion and co‐ordination at the EU level.

ABSTRACT Homelessness among Central and Eastern European (CEE) migrant communities is a concern in several Western European countries, including the Netherlands, where migration from other EU countries is often motivated by perceived employment opportunities. This study aimed to better understand the emergence of CEE labour migrants' homelessness. Based on interviews with 42 Polish and Romanian labour migrants, we explored patterns of events and situations they described in relation to becoming homeless in the Netherlands. We identified five unique pathways to homelessness, named based on what appeared to be key events and situations: (1) Loss of work as a singular event, (2) Prior vulnerabilities and multiproblem situations, (3) Dissolution from a romantic relationship and loss of work, (4) Homelessness upon arrival and (5) Serious health problems. These pathways and the underlying experiences can inform policy in several ways. Implications include providing more information about living and working in the host country, more thorough recruitment processes, reconsidering combined contracts (work and housing), strengthening the labour market position of labour migrants, providing timely support to people who become unemployed, and sheltering and supporting people in cases of homelessness.

Initial Conditions and Output Decline in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) during Transition: 1990-98

The study examines how the sub-indices of the Global Innovation Index (GII) affect the total value of fintech (financial technology) start-up fundraising in thirty-five European countries, including an eleven-country subsample from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Using annual panel data for 2013–2022. Fixed-effects models were estimated for the full sample, while random-effects models were used for the CEE countries. In these models, total fintech fundraising is the dependent variable, and the five GII subindices are the independent variables. The coefficients for Knowledge Workers, Knowledge Impact, and Business Environment are negative and statistically significant, and their effect sizes are even larger in the CEE subsample. The results suggest that improvements in the analysed factors do not necessarily lead to increased market funding for start-ups. The findings indicate that strengthening these dimensions of innovation does not automatically boost market funding for fintech start-ups. The study enriches the fintech fundraising literature by showing that improvements in the analysed factors do not translate into greater market funding for start-ups. As the study is limited to European data from 2013 to 2022, future research could extend the geographic scope or incorporate additional variables.

ABSTRACT This study examines the Middle-Income Convergence Trap (MICT) in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries by analysing their economic trajectories and the factors shaping their convergence towards advanced EU members. Using data from 1995 to 2022 and a Bayesian shrinkage estimator, the results reveal significant heterogeneity in country-specific convergence speeds. Bulgaria and Romania achieve the fastest catch-up dynamics (β ≈ 0.058; half-life 5.2 years), while Slovenia and the Czech Republic converge at much slower rates (β ≈ 0.054; half-life 5.6 years), comparable to high-income EU members. These slower speeds suggest that both countries may be approaching the MICT. Complementary dynamic fixed effects estimates further identify trade openness, human capital, and institutional quality as key drivers of convergence, while public debt is associated with increased stagnation risks. The findings underscore the need for comprehensive policy strategies that promote innovation, enhance education systems, and improve governance.

ABSTRACT We examine the long-run relationship between fiscal policy and income inequality in Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies using second-generation heterogeneous panel estimators (Common Correlated Effects Mean Group (CCEMG) and Augmented Mean Group (AMG)). Greater tax effort and higher social expenditure are systematically associated with lower inequality, whereas the distributive reach of direct taxation is comparatively weak. Taken together, the results indicate that equity gains in post-transition settings are more strongly associated with effective revenue mobilization and the scale of social spending than on the structure of the tax system. Policy priorities therefore lie in strengthening fiscal capacity and ensuring stable and well-financed social outlays.

ABSTRACT While prevailing accounts portray social democratic parties as liberal-democratic bulwarks eroded by rising illiberal populism, this article highlights the emergence of anti-liberal ideological projects from within the center-left itself. It does so by examining the ideological innovation of the post-communist social democratic left in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), focusing on the cases of Czechia and Slovakia. In both countries, over the decade following EU accession in 2004, some politicians and ideological entrepreneurs developed a culturally conservative vision of post-communist social democracy that critiqued West European social democratic models. This alternative emphasized national sovereignty, cultural and national cohesion, and the reassertion of the state’s developmental role, often aligning rhetorically and politically with right-wing populist and conservative forces. Drawing on speeches, interviews and writings, this article examines how the project reframed East–West relationships and framed social liberalism, immigration and multiculturalism as threats to social democratic concepts of solidarity and fairness. The article situates these developments within broader ideological shifts in CEE and contrasts them with parallel debates on the West European left. It concludes by reflecting on whether such conservative variants of social democracy marked a turn toward illiberalism – or an ideological current with democratic potential in a post-liberal era.

As the European population ages, the sustainability of pension systems faces a trilemma: the structural conflict between achieving benefit adequacy, fiscal stability, and labor market flexibility. This study investigates the primary research hypothesis that these three objectives involve trade-offs under current institutional designs. We examine the structural interrelationships between economic development, population health, and institutional pension characteristics across the EU’s 27 member states. Using cross-sectional data from Eurostat and the OECD from 2023, the study employs a multivariate framework, including Multiple Factor Analysis (MFA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA), to visualize latent trade-offs. Non-parametric statistical tests were applied to validate structural differences between the Nordic, Continental, Southern, and Central and Eastern European (CEE) welfare regimes. The paper’s central argument is that pension sustainability is less a demographic inevitability and more a path-dependent result of institutional “exit cultures” and regional health-wealth traps. The analysis explains 56.7% of the total variance across two primary dimensions, revealing a persistent east–west divide where GDP per capita and Healthy Life Years (HLYs) at age 65 are strongly coupled. Additionally, the analysis identified a fundamental sustainability trade-off: countries with higher pension expenditures and replacement rates, such as those in the Southern and Continental clusters, have significantly earlier labor market exit ages. Statistical evidence shows that the gender pension gap is the most significant factor in differentiating welfare regimes, with the CEE region showing significantly lower inequality than the Western cluster. Ultimately, the findings contribute to public administration literature by demonstrating that policy interventions must prioritize addressing the culture of early retirement in Western countries and the health-wealth trap in Eastern countries to ensure long-term viability.