For Romania, as for all other ex-communist countries from Eastern Europe, the transition from the rigid centrally planned economic system to the free-market economy, fair competition based, was an amazing experience. From the academic standpoint, the economic reform was a huge research opportunity, as well as having extremely important practical consequences. Based on the case of Romania, the authors have developed an original, bi-dimensional matrix model of this transition process (Scarlat Model), emphasizing the typology of four basic economic systems. Managerial aspects are underlined - both for economic systems and transition process - as well as some stability considerations. Two features of the transition strategy are presented: the transition path and duration of the process. Special attention was paid to assessing the moment by when the economic transition ends. Analysis of the transition path - based on the theory of deterministic chaos (i.e. short-run predictability) - has led to interesting results: a comprehensive research on the evolution of the Romanian currency exchange over a period of sixteen years (1990-2005) revealed three intervals in the Romanian recent history of economic transition and confirmed the diagnostic of transition end. The general model is applied in the case of Romania and some interesting findings are presented, but it is also fully applicable to all Eastern European countries and not only Romania. The EU accessing process is a different type of transition - rigorously planned, regulated and monitored.