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
2007 European Parliament election in Romania 2007 European Parliament election in Romania Romania elected its members of the European Parliament for the first time on 25 November 2007; the election was initially scheduled for 13 May, but the PM postponed it for domestic political reasons. A referendum on a new voting system was held on the same day. Romania joined the European Union on 1 January 2007, and was initially represented in the European Parliament by 35 observers as follows: 35 MEPs were appointed by Romania to serve as observers in the Parliament before the country joined in 2007. Since then up until the election, the