Editing Central Europe (section)

===Roles===
According to American professor [[Ronald Tiersky]], the 1991 summit held in [[Visegrád]] attended by the [[Czechoslovakia|Czechoslovak]], Hungarian and Polish presidents was hailed at the time as a major breakthrough in Central European cooperation, but the [[Visegrád Group]] became a vehicle for coordinating Central Europe's road to the European Union, while development of closer ties within the region languished.{{sfn|Tiersky|2004|p=472}}

{{multiple image | direction=vertical | width=220
| image1=Floristic regions in Europe (english).png
| caption1=The European floristic regions
| image2=Carpathian Basin-Pannonian Basin.jpg
| caption2=The [[Pannonian Plain]], between the [[Alps]] (west), the [[Carpathians]] (north and east), and the [[Dinaric Alps]] (southwest)
| image3=Mapcarpat2.png
| caption3=[[Carpathian Mountains|Carpathian]] countries (north-west to south-east): [[Czech Republic|CZ]], [[Austria|AT]], [[Poland|PL]], [[Slovakia|SK]], [[Hungary|HU]], [[Ukraine|UA]], [[Romania|RO]], [[Serbia|RS]]
}}

American professor [[Peter J. Katzenstein]] described Central Europe as a way station in a Europeanization process that marks the transformation process of the [[Visegrád Group]] countries in different, though comparable ways.{{sfn|Katzenstein|1997|p=6}} According to him, in Germany's contemporary public discourse "Central European identity" refers to the civilizational divide between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.{{sfn|Katzenstein|1997|p=6}} He argued that there is no precise way to define Central Europe and that the region may even include Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Serbia.{{sfn|Katzenstein|1997|p=4}}