INTRODUCTION
In the past, the Conference was traditionally organized biannually by the Faculty of Economics in Rijeka in cooperation with its partners: the Faculty of Economics Ljubljana, Slovenia, the Association of French speaking professors of economics and business, CEDIMES and Europacentrum Jean Monnet of the University of Antwerp, Belgium
The purpose of the 2009 Conference was to bring together researchers and scientists from Croatia, EU member and candidate countries, and participants from those countries that are in the process of becoming candidates, such as Serbia, B&H and others. Approximately 256 scientists, researchers, specialists and state officials from 25 mentioned countries and regions took part in the Conference. The bounding element of the Conference was the participants’ mutual interest in the theoretical and practical aspects of EU enlargement and deepening issues. It is difficult to conclude, whether this interest was purely scientific and related to advanced analytical methods in economy, or more pragmatic and related to political or business impacts of the mentioned integration processes. From 124 papers presented at the Conference, the CD-book of complete texts contains the following 92 Papers. In this publication the papers are organized in the order as they were presented during the discussion sessions.
The Conference, which resulted in the present CD-book, is one of the few in the broader South East and Central European Region focusing on analytical and scientific research analyzing economic and business impacts of the EU enlargement and deepening processes. Special value of the conference and of the many paper in this CD-book is that they reflect the reality and the understanding of the development of the EU integration processes from the perspective of “non-committed” experts coming from countries with different level of theoretical and practical integration experience.
All of the papers presented at the 2009 Conference are published for the first time in electronic form on this CD-book. The CD will be distributed among the participants and sent to a number of libraries and institutions. The findings and results of this Conference, published in this CD-book, will have a broad impact on different national and business levels of the accessing countries as well as on those from candidate and even EU countries.
Moreover, Conference papers will be revised by international experts and in cooperation with selected authors improved if necessary. Together with some additional studies, the selected papers from the Conference will also be published in a special monograph.
Vinko Kandžija, Ph.D.
Andrej Kumar, Ph.D.
for the Program Committee