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
Motto of the European Union the 15 countries of the European Union (a.k.a. "EU-15"): Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden & United Kingdom. In April 1998, French newspaper "Ouest-France"’s Patrick La Prairie proposed the organisation of a European mottoes contest for the, then 15, EU members' secondary education students. This event was meant as a 50-year celebration of Founding father of the European Union Robert Schuman's famous declaration about a supranational Community which eventually led to the creation of the actual European Union. Back in 1998, the European Union had already a flag of Europe, and anthem