Slovakia was established as an independent, sovereign state on 1 January 1993. Since the dissolution of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, Slovakia has focused on the following activities: transforming a centrally controlled economy into a free market economy; the reform of public...

Latvia is a parliamentary republic first established on 18 November 1918, whose constitution (Satversme) was adopted on 15 February 1922. Its de facto sovereignty and independence ended with the USSR’s occupation as from 1940 and were restored by the Declaration of the Renewal of the...

The Republic of Croatia ended unilateral formal-legal relations with the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with the Declaration on Sovereignty and Independence, on 25 June 1991. Following international recognition in 1992, Croatia became a member of the United Nations on 22 May 1992. The...

The period of democratic transition began in November 1989 and was mainly defined by the following events: the ending of the totalitarian rule of the Communist Party on 17 November 1989; the beginning of the reconstruction of state administration and the centralized economic system in January 1990; the...

Political Background Until 25 June 1991, Slovenia was a constituent republic of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The first multiparty elections in Slovenia took place in the spring of 1990. On 23 December 1991, a new constitution was adopted. It created a modern democratic...

On 11 March 1990, the Supreme Council adopted the Provisional Basic Law of the Republic of Lithuania, which was viewed as the constitution, thereby suspending the former constitution of 12 May 1938. However, the Provisional Basic Law was only a constitutional Act of a transitional character; it...

Until 1991, Macedonia was a constituent Republic of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. During the disintegration of the federation in the early 1990s, the Republic of Macedonia elected its first democratic parliamentary assembly (the Sobranie) in November 1990. A referendum on...

The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (GFAP), popularly known as the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) since it was negotiated and initialed at a U.S. Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio, defined Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state consisting of two entities, the Federation of...

Kosovo and Metohija used to be as an autonomous province an integral part of the Republic of Serbia. In 1989 Serbia revoked unilaterally the autonomy of the province. In the second half of the 1990s, the tensions between Kosovo Albanians and Serb military forces led to fighting. The...

In its present borders, Bosnia-Herzegovina was created on 25 November 1943 at a session of Tito’s Communist Party, the winning party after the Second World War. After the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was created in 1945, Bosnia-Herzegovina existed as one of its six republics for...