The Centre for Central-Eastern and Balkan Europe

CECOB, il Centro per l’Europa Centro-Orientale e Balcanica (the Centre for Central Eastern and Balkan Europe) has recently merged with the Department of Political and Social Science at the University of Bologna. Find information on CECOB’s establishment, accomplishments and history below.

The Centre for Central-Eastern and Balkan Europe was founded in 1996 by the University of Bologna and the Municipality of Bologna, with the active participation of the European Union, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Regional Government of Emilia Romagna, the Municipalities of Forlì, Cesena and Cervia and the Carisbo Foundation. In 2002 CECOB was reestablished as a consortium of the University of Bologna and IECOB with Stefano Bianchini as its president and Francesco Privitera as its director.

Like the board of IECOB, CECOB's Academic Board was made up of the extensive network of scholars that forms EBIN. The Centre also relied on the contribution and participation thousands of alumni from participating universities and other programmes. On the institutional level, CECOB collaborated with the Central European Initiative (CEI) and the Adriatic-Ionian Initiative (AII). CECOB carried out projects for the Italian Institute for Foreign Trade (ICE), the Italian Diplomatic Institute “Mario Toscano” (ISDI), the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), and the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe and North America (BRESCE), among other international organisations.

CECOB’s connection to EBIN enabled it to work across disciplines and national boundaries to carry out research in politics, sociology, and economics. Taking advantage of this unique position, CECOB organised a number of international postgraduate training courses in human rights, economics, and environmental science with a special focus on the Balkan states and Eastern Europe.