Transition economy to the IMF, Iran is in transition to a market economy, demonstrating early stages of a transition economy. The eight first-wave accession countries, which joined the European Union on 1 May 2004 (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia) and the two second-wave accession countries that joined on 1 January 2007 (Romania and Bulgaria) have completed the transition process. According to the World Bank, "the transition is over" for the 10 countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007. It can be also understood as all countries of the Eastern Bloc. "Transition economics" is a special branch
First-level NUTS of the European Union First-level NUTS of the European Union The Classification of Territorial Units for Statistics, (NUTS, for the French ""), is a geocode standard for referencing the administrative divisions of countries for statistical purposes. The standard was developed by the European Union. There are three levels of NUTS defined, with two levels of local administrative units (LAUs) below. Depending on their size, not all countries have every level of division. One of the most extreme cases is Luxembourg, which has only LAUs; the three NUTS divisions each correspond to the entire country itself. Below are the "first level NUTS regions" of the