New Divisions, Ten Years On

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Nearly ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall symbolically ended four decades of isolation for the East Bloc, new fault lines are dividing central Europe.

Where once the region's political and economic elite looked east to Moscow, today they look west to Brussels.

Western cars ply the increasingly jammed streets of central European capitals and smart Western retail outlets have replaced many of the dowdy Communist-era shops in Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, Bratislava, Bucharest and other cities.

But analysts say a key distinction has emerged between the countries of Central and Eastern Europe which are heading for quick European Union (EU) membership and those which are not.

Five countries in the region have begun talks with Brussels on rapid accession - the Czech Republic, Poland, …