Central and Eastern Europe Soviet Union; the independent states in former Yugoslavia (which were not considered part of the Eastern bloc); and the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (which chose not to join the CIS with the other 12 former republics of the USSR). The CEE countries are further subdivided by their accession status to the European Union (EU): the eight first-wave accession countries that joined the EU on 1 May 2004 (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Slovenia), the two second-wave accession countries that joined on 1 January 2007 (Romania and Bulgaria) and the third-wave accession country that
Western European Union as a task force of the Western European Union. The Western European Union had ten member countries, six associate member countries, five observer countries and seven associate partner countries. On 14 June 2001, WEU President Solana stated that there was no foreseeable reason to change the status of the non member countries in the organisation. All member countries of the WEU were also members of both NATO and the European Union. These are the only nations that had full voting rights. Observer countries: (Rome – 1992) Observer countries were members of the European Union, but not of NATO. Rome –