How Beneficial is EU Membership for CEE Countries: an Attempt of Critical Analysis

Tectonic changes in the system of modern geo-economic relations necessitate the revision of many theoretical postulates. One of them is the unconditional benefit of participating in integration associations. The purpose of the study is to assess the real scale of benefits received by Central-Eastern European countries from participation in the EU. The study of the relatively long experience of membership of CentralEastern European countries in the EU allowed to formulate some conclusions, the most significant of which are: the excessive ideological and political argumentation used in Central-Eastern European countries in the initial period of decision-making on accession to the EU, which significantly reduced the effectiveness of the analysis of the economic consequences of the future membership; the significant methodological complexity of conducting a quantified analysis of the macroeconomic aspects of EU membership and, therefore, the difficulty of determining the quantifiable impact of the general effects of integration in relation to the countries of Central-Eastern Europe; the presence of overly optimistic assessments of the effectiveness of Central-Eastern European countries receiving transfers from the EU budget.