Regions of Europe

Europe is often divided into regions based on geographical, cultural or historical criteria. There exist many European structures, some are political and some are event specific - examples include the Council of Europe, the European Broadcasting Union with the Eurovision Song Contest, and the European Olympic Committees with the European Games. Transcontinental countries are those that may or may not be included—such as Russia, Turkey with major parts in Asia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Cyprus, Armenia, and Israel.

Groupings by compass directions are the hardest to define in Europe, since there are a few calculations of the midpoint of Europe (among other issues), and the pure geographical criteria of "east" and "west" are often confused with the political meaning these words acquired during the Cold War Era.

There are also physical geographic regions, such as the central up-lands and the European plain.

The geographic scheme in use by the United Nations created for internal use by the statistics division includes all of the above divisions, save Central Europe.

Europe can be divided along many differing historical lines, normally corresponding to those parts that were inside or outside a particular cultural phenomenon, empire or political division. The areas varied at different times, and so it is arguable as to which were part of some common historical entity (e.g., were Germany or Britain part of Roman Europe as they were only partly and relatively briefly part of the Empire—or were the countries of the former communist Yugoslavia part of the Eastern Bloc, since it was not in the Warsaw Pact).

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