Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW, Polish: Ośrodek Studiów Wschodnich) is a Warsaw-based think tank that undertakes independent research on the political, economic and social situation in Central and Eastern Europe, Balkans, Caucasus and Central Asia. The Centre was founded in 1990 and is fully financed from the Polish state budget. In 2006 the Centre was named in honour of its founder Marek Karp. The OSW is the largest of the European Union’s think tanks to focus its research on the part of Europe which until 1989 had been separated from the West by the Iron Curtain.