East-Central Europe is the region between German-, West Slavic- and Hungarian-speaking Europe and the Eastern Slavic lands of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Those lands are described as situated "between two": "between two worlds, between two stages, between two futures". In the geopolitical sense, East-Central Europe can be considered alongside Western and Eastern Europe, as one of the "Three Europes". The concept differs from that of Central and Eastern Europe in that it is based on criteria whereby the states of Central and Eastern Europe belong to two different cultural and economic circles.
Definitions
Oskar Halecki
, who distinguished four regions in Europe, defined East-Central Europe as a region from Finland to Greece, "the eastern part of Central Europe, between Sweden, Germany, and Italy, on the one hand, and Turkey and Russia on the other". According to Halecki:
In the course of European history, a great variety of peoples in this region created their own independent states, sometimes quite large and powerful; in connection with Western Europe they developed their individual national cultures and contributed to the general progress of European civilization.
United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names was set up to consider the technical problems of domestic standardization of geographical names. The Group is composed of experts from various linguistic/geographical divisions that have been established at the UN Conferences on the Standardization of Geographical Names.
East-Central and South-East Europe Division: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, European Turkey, and Ukraine.
International Federation of the Institutes of East-Central Europe has four institutes in its structure and includes over a hundred members from Belarus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine. The institutes were established successively after 1990, with a secretariat in Lublin, to stimulate the debate on the issue of Central European space between the East and the West. This experience of cooperation – from the very beginning open for representatives of other East-Central European nation-States as well as Russians, Germans and Jews – allowed creation of the Joint Committee of UNESCO and International Committee of Historical Sciences. The first president of the committee was Jerzy Kłoczowski, long-time member of the UNESCO Executive Council and president of the Institute of East-Central Europe in Lublin. The committee's 10 meetings were devoted to East-Central Europe. The Federation maintains official relations with UNESCO.
East Central European Center at Columbia University was established "to promote the study of the countries lying between Germany and Russia and between the Baltic and Aegean seas". Its program covers Albania, Austria, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine.
Michael Foucher defined Middle Europe as "an intermediate geopolitical space between the West and Russia, a space of historical transitions between these two organizational poles; political and territorial heirs imposed from the East, i.e. Kremlin; nowadays streamlining process imposed by the West". According to this author, the following sub-regions form Median Europe:
* in the North – Central Europe stricto sensu
* in the South – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, the region "overflows towards Ukraine and Belarus"
*Greece is cited as not being a part of Median Europe but playing an important role there
Daniel Călin – In the Final ReportNATO and the EU in the Balkans – a Comparison prepared by Romanian NATO Fellow Daniel Călin, three sub-regions of Middle Europe are distinguished:
South-Eastern Europe is distinguished from the Balkans, defined as the region consisting of most of the countries in the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, plus Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece.
Narrow definition
East-Central Europe is sometimes defined as the eastern part of Central Europe and is limited to member states of Visegrád Group – Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. This definition is close to the German concept of :de:Ostmitteleuropa.
