Ten Eastern European countries are currently conducting negotiations with the EU with the aim of becoming a member of the European Union as soon as possible. When joining the EU, these Eastern European countries are meant to have largely completed the transition to a free market system. The prospect of joining is a factor which makes for a considerable acceleration of this process. At the heart of the project are the changes capital markets experience in the course of adopting the Acquis Communautaire. We mainly look at stock and bond markets, but also at foreign exchange markets and – if applicable – at markets for financial derivatives in Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia and Hungary. Russian capital markets are also included in the analysis. The study is divided into two parts. The first part is devoted to a comprehensive stock-taking of the development in capital markets and examines the macroeconomic background as well as the specific structures of the individual capital markets and of corporate finance. An important part of this is the analysis of market efficiency and of the short- and long-term interaction between Eastern European and Western financial markets. The second part consists of a detailed examination of the effects the adoption of the Acquis Communautaire produces. As for macroeconomics, the focus will chiefly be on the future development of the exchange rate systems as well as the development of public finance and the banking system. In addition we will analyse the repercussions that the EU’s eastward enlargement has on Russia’s economy and capital markets in a separate chapter. The microeconomic analysis refers to expected changes in the regulations governing capital markets, demand and supply effects in the field of corporate finance and diversification advantages investments in Eastern European stock markets offer. The final part is made up of an analysis of competition processes between Eastern and Western European stock exchanges and of an in-depth comparison of the results of the individual Eastern European countries we examined.