Decentralisation has an important meaning in the context of European integration, since a Europe composed of subsidiary spatial units is to be constructed and a ”Europe of regions” is on the agenda of many political discussions. From the early 1990s, the European
Communities (EC), later the European Union (EU), promoted the idea of administrative decentralisation also in transformation countries. For EU accession, decentralisation was made one of the prerequisites. But it met centralistic traditions originating not only in the Communist era and could be partly enforced only with considerable difficulties.
The paper investigates in a comparative way the efforts made and the results achieved so far in East-Central and Southeast European countries to establish local as well as regional self-government. A special focus is laid on the regional level, to which administrative powers have been devolved only later and partly insufficiently. Special attention is also paid to the correspondence of administrative regionalisation with historical regional and cultural identities.Decentralizacija ima važno značenje u kontekstu europskih integracija, s obzirom na nastojanje stvaranja ujedinjene Europe sastavljene od pomoćnih prostornih jedinica, a i „Europa regija” tema je mnogih političkih diskusija. Od ranih 1990-ih Europska zajednica, kasnije Europska unija, promiče ideju administrativne decentralizacije i u zemljama u tranziciji. Decentralizacija je i jedan od uvjeta pristupa Europskoj uniji, ali tom procesu suprotstavila se tradicija centralističkog uređenja koja svoje korijene dijelom vuče iz
razdoblja komunističkog upravljanja i on se mogao sprovesti djelomično i uz poteškoće.
U ovom članku uspoređuju se napori i do sad postignuti rezultati u zemljama istočne i jugoistočne Europe u formiranju lokalne i regionalne samouprave. Poseban naglasak stavljen je na regionalnu razinu na koju se prijenos centralne vlasti odvio kasnije i samo u
manjoj mjeri. Također, naglasak je stavljen na analizu preklapanja administrativnih regija s povijesnim regionalnim i kulturnim identitetima
