Volume 11

The eastward enlargement of the European Union in May 2004 added about 100 million people to the EU and above all opened up big challenges and major opportunities both for the new member countries and the older ones. This is the central theme of this volume, resulting from the meeting "East Europe, the EU, Italy. Towards strategic connections" promoted by the Fondazione Edison in cooperation with the Lincei Academy and held in Rome on March 30th-31st, 2006. The effects of the enlargement on the functioning of the EU institutions, on the relationships with the other East European countries and on the regional and global economic dynamics are reviewed in the first part in essays by Paolo Guerrieri, Paolo Garonna and Yan He, Giorgia Giovannetti and Francesca Luchetti, and Milica Uvalic. The second part focuses on the European banking institutions and on the trading banks for the East, with Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell and Fabrizio Saccomanni dealing respectively with the roles of the European Central Bank and of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, while Alessandro Profumo presents the activity of a trading bank in East Europe. The entrepreneurs' role in the success of the transition of East Europe's economies is tackled by Oliver Pfirrmann, Filippo Marazzi, Aldo Fumagalli Romario and Dario Velo in the third part of the volume.