The region may not be far away from a potentially harmful bout of tax competition, which would no doubt attract the ire of more established EU members such as Germany and France.

ECONOMIST: Will more of eastern Europe adopt flat-rate tax regimes?

However, it was not in doubt that the region had produced many authoritarian regimes and, until last year, some fantastic rates of economic growth.

ECONOMIST: What would Confucius say now?

No doubt he would have pined less during the late 20th Century, when many parts of the region became something of a hardscrabble industrial centre -- but as local manufacturing faded in the 1970s, rural charm re-emerged.

BBC: A new New York, just up the Hudson