Eastern Europe is heading for a violent "spring of discontent", according to experts in the region who fear that the global economic downturn is generating a dangerous popular backlash on the streets.
Hit increasingly hard by the financial crisis, countries such as Bulgaria, Romania and the Baltic states face deep political destabilisation and social strife, as well as an increase in racial tension...
According to the most recent estimates, the economies of some eastern European countries, after posting double-digit growth for nearly a decade, will contract by up to 5% this year, with inflation peaking at more than 13%. Many fear Romania, which joined the European Union with Bulgaria in 2007, may be the next to suffer major breakdowns in public order...
Another problem in Romania, as elsewhere in the region, is that many new middle-class house owners have taken out mortgages in euros. With local currencies collapsing, repayment is becoming harder...
Dr Jonathan Eyal, a regional specialist at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank in London, said eastern European countries were ill-equipped to deal with the impact of the global downturn and risked "social meltdown"...
More (grim) details at the Guardian.
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