INTRODUCTION
In a global world, it is rather straightforward to find similarities among regions located in different geographical areas or under different cultural regimes.
CEE: Central and Eastern Europe is a term describing former communist states in Europe, after the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989/90.
In scholarly literature, the abbreviations CEE or CEEC or EEE are often used for this concept. In the sense of the current study, EEE includes all the Eastern bloc countries west of the post-World War II border with the former Soviet Union, the independent states in former Yugoslavia (which were not considered part of the Eastern bloc), and the three Baltic states - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania - that chose not to join the CIS withDOI: 10.4018∕978-1-4666-6268-1.ch007 the other 12 former republics of the USSR. The transition countries in Europe and Central Asia are classified today into two political-economic entities: CEE and CIS. The EEE countries are further subdivided by their accession status to the European Union (EU): the eight first-wave accession countries that joined the EU in May 2004 (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia) and the two second-wave accession countries that joined in January 2007 (Romania and Bulgaria). According to the World Bank, the transition is over for the 10 countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007.
MENA: Middle East and North Africa is a term describing the Arab countries from the Middle East and the northern part of Africa. According to the World Bank definition, MENA” is an economically diverse region that includes both the oil-rich economies in the Gulf and countries that are resource-scarce in relation to population, such as Egypt, Morocco, and Yemen.” The Arab Region refers mainly to the following Arab countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, West Bank/Gaza and Yemen.
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