Southeast Europe

There are overlapping and conflicting definitions of the region, due to political, economic, historical, cultural, and geographical considerations.

The largest cities of the region are Istanbul, Athens, Bucharest, Sofia, and Belgrade.

Countries described in 2004 by Istituto Geografico De Agostini as being entirely within the Balkan region, are: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and North Macedonia.

[2] However from the 1990s onwards, in part due to the negative historical and political connotations of the term Balkans,[3] (especially since the military conflicts of the 1990s in Yugoslavia in the western half of the region) the term Southeast Europe is becoming increasingly popular.

[4][5] The German Ständige Ausschuss für geographische Namen (Standing Committee on Geographical Names), which develops and recommends rules for the uniform use of geographical names, proposes two sets of boundaries.

Topographical map of Southeastern Europe
The cultural borders of Europe according to the Standing Committee on Geographical Names, Germany. The map displays two different segment-bordering ways superimposed on each other. [ 6 ]
Regions of Europe based on CIA World Factbook . Southeastern Europe in brown