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Die Wirtschaft dürfte sich in den mittel- und osteuropäischen Ländern (MOEL) beleben, allerdings länderweise in unterschiedlichem Ausmaß. Zwischen September 2008 und März 2009 hatte sie teilweise einen schweren Rückschlag erlitten. Polen und Albanien waren die einzigen MOEL, deren Wachstum sich nur verlangsamte, während die Wirtschaftsleistung der baltischen Länder und der Ukraine drastisch schrumpfte. Eine Rückkehr zu den kräftigen Wachstumsraten der Jahre vor 2008 ist kurz- und mittelfristig nicht sehr wahrscheinlich, da das internationale und vor allem europäische Umfeld weniger günstig ist. Zudem haben sich die Bedingungen für die Finanzierung von Investitionsprojekten nachhaltig verschlechtert. Das hohe Leistungsbilanzdefizit einzelner MOEL wird von den Handelspartnern skeptischer beurteilt, und dies beinhaltet für die baltischen Länder und die Länder Südosteuropas eine grundlegende Änderung ihrer Parameter. ; Reprint from WIFO-Monatsberichte, Vol. 83, No. 5, May 2010 ; The Central and East European Countries (CEECs) have begun to show signs of more or less brisk economic recovery. It may, however, take time until their economies will have offset the severe setback they had to face between October 2008 and March 2009. The degree to which individual CEECs suffered from the international financial and economic crisis varies considerably, due to a range of different factors. Poland was an exception, as its GDP growth decelerated without coming to a complete halt in 2009. This had quite an impact as the size of the Polish GDP is similar to those of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia put together. The only other country where growth did not stop entirely was Albania. In sharp contrast to these two countries, the Baltic countries and Ukraine had to face a drastic decline in their GDP. The performance of all other CEECs ranged somewhere between these two extremes. It is rather unlikely that the CEECs will any time soon be returning to GDP growth rates as high as those they had achieved in the last pre-crisis years. The European and global business environment has become less propitious, and may not improve in the near future. In addition, the producing sector has been finding it more difficult and costly to get access to borrowing. Markets are likely to remain sceptic about high current account deficits, which, if true, would entail far-reaching changes in conditions especially for the Baltic and Southeast European countries. Most of the CEECs had achieved sound fiscal results up to 2008. National budget deficits were small or even non-existent. Government debt, too, was in most cases far below the Maastricht limit. Where debt is a problem, it is mainly private debt. Inflation decelerated in the course of the crisis and has disappeared completely in several countries. There is no saying whether inflation will reaccelerate soon. What is more scaring is the rise in unemployment, which will only stop in the context of a stronger revival of GDP growth.

Die ländlichen Räume in den mittel- und osteuropäischen Ländern sehen sich mit zahlreichen Problemen konfrontiert, die häufig verallgemeinert mit einer geringen Bevölkerungsdichte, einer unzureichenden Infrastruktur, einem niedrigen Pro-Kopf-Einkommen, einer ungünstigen Alters- und Bildungsstruktur, einer hohen Arbeitslosigkeit und einer immer noch starken Abhängigkeit von der Landwirtschaft beschrieben werden. Mit Hilfe einer Clusteranalyse auf NUTS-3-Ebene kann jedoch gezeigt werden, dass ländliche Räume keine homogene Einheit bilden, sondern jeweils spezifische Charakteristika besitzen. Die Analyse gruppiert die Regionen in Mittel- und Osteuropa zu fünf Typen, welche Aussagen über den Stand der sozio-ökonomischen Disparitäten erlauben: a) agrarisch geprägte Regionen mit niedrigstem Einkommen und sehr hoher Arbeitslosenrate, b) agrarisch geprägte Regionen mit niedrigem Einkommen, c) durchschnittlich entwickelte Regionen mit mittlerem Einkommen und hoher Arbeitslosenrate, d) industriell geprägte Regionen mit leicht überdurchschnittlichem Einkommen und e) Hauptstadtregionen und andere große Städte mit hohem Einkommen. Die Ergebnisse bieten eine erste Orientierung für die Konzipierung von Raumentwicklungsstrategien im Rahmen der EU-Struktur- und Regionalpolitik und für tiefer gehende Analysen. (Autorenreferat)

Transitions, democratization and recent democratic backsliding in CEE provide
a rich context for examining the meaning and shifting of civic activism and how people
participate and organize in civil society today. This article offers a fresh and comparative
analysis based on empirical data on the question of what motivates formal and informal
activism, and the potentially transformative role of civil society that has recently faced
such challenges as democratic backsliding, shrinking public space and polarization. It
looks specifically at the responses of Polish and Hungarian activists and advocacy CSOs
to these new challenges. Their strategies bring an important lesson on how civil society
actors can adapt, continue their mission, or even turn challenges into opportunities.
These new trends indicate that civic space in CEE is shifting which is further influenced
by the reactions to new forms of social, economic and political crises. It is argued that
this shift and the new trends in civic activism require not only fresh empirical data, but
also a revision of normative and methodological approaches that have so far been used
in civil society and social movement research.

One of the striking features in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries is the deterioration of their agricultural and food trade balance during transition to a market economy as im-ports increased faster than exports or exports even declined. This paper investigates the Slovenian agricultural and food trade in more detail focusing on changes in the geographical distribution of trade and the nature of trade specialization on the basis of the Grubel-Lloyd Intra-Industry Trade index and Marginal Intra-Industry Trade Indices. The results indicate that Slovenian agricultural and food trade largely remains of the inter-industry type with specialisation of exports towards the former Yugoslav markets and imports from the European Union. The proportion of intra-industry trade was especially low for bulk commodities with little or no processing. A major explanations for these findings is that despite the "free" trade agreements Slovenia signed with the EU and countries of Central and Eastern Europe the level of protection in the agricultural and food sector has remained rather high. Due to EU membership Slovenia faces now direct competition in a market of 25 countries. This intensifies the restructuring process in the Slovenian agricultural and food sector. Due to the present low level of IIT this likely induces rather high adjustment costs since restructuring and reallo-cation of factors will have to occur between and not within industries.

The following editorial offers a reflection on the situation of Central and Eastern Europe with a special focus on the European Union's Eastern Neighbourhood and Russia. In the past few years, we have witnessed the divisive impact of neoliberalism, economic recession, Britain's departure from the EU, the refugee and migrant crisis which further shattered societies along cultural lines, the aggressive expansionism of Russia exploiting the weakness of the West, and more recently, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic with an unprecedented impact on societies, global health and economy. The editorial reflects on how Central and Eastern Europe scores among the imaginative geographies and how these imaginative geographies translate into geopolitics concerning hard and soft power application in the Eastern European Neighbourhood.