Let us cast our minds back to the 1990s and the turn of the millennium.
The countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which had finally shaken off the Soviet yoke, captivated the whole world with their collective courage and the speed of their transition to political and economic liberty. They were identified as the “new Europe”, in contrast to the Europe of the EU at the time, which was considered to be unwieldy, pessimistic and less innovative. A popular cartoonist of the day drew a dynamic, smiling young woman tapping on the shoulder of an older lady, who appeared to be frozen in her fatalism. The backdrop to this was the Prodi Commission, somewhat bolder than its predecessor, deciding to speed up the accession processes and throw the doors open to as many as possible in 2004. This XXL wave of enlargement was supposed to create shock waves all across the reunified continent, to the benefit of the EU, which had been made to look ridiculous by the resignation of the Santer Commission and the woeful inadequacies of the Treaty of Nice.
And here we are now, nearly at the end of 2018, and this “new Europe” seems to have aged faster than the old one. It no longer looks like the promises made by the physical and political courage embodied by Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel in particular, and by the intense debate between intellectuals and artists of both sides, driven by a spirit of freedom, will be kept. Quite the reverse, we see disturbing examples of intensive backpedalling towards a pre-democratic form of governance, a primary nationalism, a moral archaism and a protected corruption.
We are not talking here about the three Baltic states, which are by and large good sports, or poor old Cyprus, for which the EU has proven incapable of securing a Turkish withdrawal. At the top of this sad podium we crown the Visegrad Four, whose reputation for a lack of humanitarian hospitality precedes them, and the two largest countries of which are at the start of an “article 7” procedure. Romania may soon come and share in this shame.
In all three cases, the independence of the judiciary, in other words the separation of powers required for the rule of law to prevail, is under threat or already gone. Based on a deliberate misreading of the principles of Christianity, the Polish and Hungarian authorities are trampling asylum law underfoot and taking back the legally acquired rights of women, whilst the Romanian government has organised a referendum aiming to enshrine a ban on same-sex marriage in the country’s constitution. Warsaw and Malta stand out from the crowd within international bodies due to their regressive positions on health and sexual and reproductive rights. Budapest is undermining the freedoms of religion and education as well as the actions of humanitarian NGOs.
The freedom of the press has been chipped away at, sometimes through raw violence. In the last year, three journalists have been murdered in three new member states: Malta (Daphne Caruana Galizia), Slovakia (Jan Kuciak) and Bulgaria (Viktoria Marinova); all three had threatened to blow the whistle on corruption cases – what an extraordinary coincidence! And Poland recently blocked the Council’s conclusions on the application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Hand in hand with this emphasis on national identity go recurrent verbal attacks on the authority of the EU. We might have expected a bit more moderation from these countries, all of which are net beneficiaries. Warsaw and Budapest have challenged duly adopted decisions before the Court of Justice (most recently, the posted workers directive). In the debate on the “mobility package”, most of the Eastern European countries were minded not to legislate. And when, following the most recent IPCC report, a significant hike in the principal targets to fight global warming was proposed, the most vociferous opponents were Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Croatia.
Among this landscape, and although it saw a pro-nationalist swing in its most recent elections, only Slovenia seems to be a (provisional) exception, having been on a remarkable journey since it joined, becoming the first to hold, successfully, a Presidency of the Council, maintaining a progressive line on climate matters and meeting the criteria to join the Schengen area and the Eurozone in 2007. Incidentally, all of the new member states are obliged to join the Eurozone as well. Seven of them (including all three Baltic states) did so between 2007 and 2015. As for the other six, although Bulgaria may hope to become the 20th Eurozone member state fairly soon, it is not clear where the others (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic (which have been EU members for 14 years), Romania and Croatia) stand in terms of preparations and/or political will. A struggling Eurozone has admittedly lost some of its appeal, but this does not alter the commitments made.
The bottom line is that although it is easy to pinpoint what the EU has given these member states, particularly through the agricultural and cohesion policies, it is harder to identify their positive contributions to the development of the EU. Have their governments made any interesting proposals to improve the way the Club works, the EU’s standing in the world, the future of the European model? We could even be forgiven for getting more radical in our questions. Have their leaders understood the objective benefits of sharing and transferring sovereignty, so as to have more weight in the world’s evolution? Have they grasped the principles and advantages of the Community method? Do they fully understand the enormity of the geopolitical and human consequences of continuing to flout commitments they have signed off, starting with the very Preamble to the TEU?
One might argue that in the “old Europe”, the situation is scarcely any better: see Brexit, the rise of nationalism in several countries, Italy’s behaviour, etc. This column will have ample opportunity to return to these. But in any event, the argument has its limitations; let us simply compare freedoms, the rule of law, the status of women, respect for minorities, scientific encouragement and the acceptance of interculturality.
The countries of the “new Europe” were dealt pretty good hands at the start of this century. They could have “bluffed” us through rival democratic excellence, the extension of freedoms, the effectiveness of tolerance, social security, a transition to the green economy, tackling corruption, European inventiveness, being open to the world and its poorest citizens. They have taken the opposite path. There can be no doubt that only broader and larger-scale action from their civil societies can succeed in bucking the trend. These civil societies certainly expect more solidarity from the West. Will they be frogmarched back to bygone days, whilst noting, as during the darkest hours of communism: nothing new in the West?
Renaud Denuit.