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
Referendums related to the European Union Union. Austria, Sweden, and Finland were admitted as members of the EU, acceding on 1 January 1995. Two countries held referendums on the ratification of the treaty of Amsterdam. The 2004 enlargement of the European Union involved ten candidate states, eight from Central and Eastern Europe, and the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Cyprus. In 2003, referendums on joining the EU were held in all these nations except Cyprus. Since the results were in favourable in all cases, all ten candidate countries were admitted as members of the EU, acceding on 1 May 2004. Denmark and the United Kingdom received