Message #108686

[Bianca]

Southeastern Europe



Due to the connotations of the term 'Balkan' mentioned above, many people prefer the term Southeastern Europe instead.

For the first time this term was used in 1941 for the political needs of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi leadership of the Third Reich.

The use of this term is slowly growing; a European Union initiative of 1999 is called the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, and the online newspaper Balkan Times renamed itself Southeast European Times in 2003.

The use of this term to mean the Balkan peninsula (and only that) technically ignores the geographical presence of northern Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Ciscaucasus, which are also located in the southeastern part of the European continent.

 






The Western Balkan states according to the European Union






Western Balkans



European Union institutions and member states define the "Western Balkans" as Albania and the constituent republics of the former Yugoslavia, minus Slovenia.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development uses "Western Balkans" to refer to the above states, minus Croatia