摘要：Historically and geographically, the transitional countries of Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, created by the collapse of the real-socialist system, have always been oriented towards the West-European markets and eager to create close economic and political ties with the EU member-countries and to be integrated into the Western economic system. The EU leaders are well aware of the economic hardships these new transitional countries are faced with, that it will take them several years to adjust to the new system of values and behaviour. With this in mind, they came up with a proposal to create an integration of these transitional countries under the advisory leadership of the EU economic agencies and with their active help. One of the positive goals of the idea of integration by means of CEFTA was to establish a relatively homogeneous economic entity and create the conditions necessary for the future successful economic cooperation with the EU. The cooperation of the transitional countries and the EU so far has shown some promise but also some shortcomings which ought to be eliminated or at least their negative consequences minimised. There are two types of shortcomings: the institutional and the material, and they depend on the degree of development of a transitional country, its legal norms and some other non-economic factors, political, social and cultural.
