European UnionOpinionsPolitics

Stop Blaming Eastern Europe For the EU’s Failure to Integrate

The public debate on European integration has shifted significantly over the past few years, especially after the Brexit referendum. Where first there was a mild spectrum of opinions, discussion is now polarised between the supporters of more integration and outright sceptics. In many ways, however, this has remained a battle of words. In practice, few Member States harbour any serious desire for deeper integration, and fewer still are openly courting an exit. And yet, this battle of words has taken on surprising aspects, one of which is a regional division between the supposed western liberal core of the EU, and a reactionary, sceptic, illiberal periphery in Eastern Europe.

This narrative, which is particularly popular online, is also seeping through public debate. One need only take a look at Emmanuel Macron‘s speeches to see the conflating of western European (or even French) values with those of the entire Union, sidestepping what is actually listed in the Treaties. The picture painted is more or less thus: the original founding countries are able and willing to push forward along the path of ever closer union. The partners that joined in the two eastern enlargements, on the other hand, are backward and stubbornly opposed to more integration, thus holding the entire project back. Some even draw the conclusion that the EU has expanded too fast, and that proper federalisation had to take precedence over enlargement.

This is a comforting narrative, at least for western Europeans. It also contains a kernel of truth: concerns about the rule of law and separation of powers in Eastern European Member States are legitimate and well-grounded. It is also undeniable that these countries and their governments have been quick in pointing to Brussels as a scapegoat for all their ills. What does not follow is the belief that, in their absence, the rest of the continent could speedily achieve unification. Upon closer scrutiny, this belief is revealed to be little more than wishful thinking.

In Search of a Liberal Core

The first problem, when romanticising the EU’s supposed western liberal core, is defining its borders. When it comes to dogged defence of State autonomy, Austria is not that different from Poland. Even if one assumes that the demarcation overlaps with the old ideological borders of the Cold War, the comparison does not look stronger. The current Italian government, which openly cites Orbán as a role model, has no claim on a moral high ground over Eastern Europe. In the United Kingdom, the Tories (who share ECR membership with the ruling Law and Justice party in Poland) are entrenched both in protection of the establishment and in some cases literal aristocracy – hardly a better track record than the Czech Republic or Slovakia.

eastern Europe EU constitution ratification
A ratification map of the EU constitution in 2005. Opposition to the constitution was hardly an eastern prerogative.

One may refine this even further, and argue that the western integrationist core corresponds to at least five of the six original founders. This subdivision, however, also fails scrutiny. France has done much to retain its autonomy, particularly in foreign policy and security. The Kingdom of the Netherlands – a liberal western European country if ever there was one – remains one of the most determined opponents of federalisation, especially on military matters and Eurozone reform.

When it comes to European integration and European political culture, there is no such thing as a pro-integration, liberal core. Significantly more lip service is paid in the West to the ideas and values of European integration, but the willingness to translate that into a meaningful pooling of sovereignty is low. French vetoes date back to the foundation of the Coal and Steel Community, and the recent wave of illiberalism sweeping across the West has dimmed prospects even further.

The Blame Game

The turn towards illiberalism is a common phenomenon all over the Western world, even at its margins like in the Philippines. The Republican Party in the United States started to change in the early 1990s with the likes of Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich, when the EU was newborn and ended at the Oder. This point cannot be repeated too often: what is branded as “populism” in current political discourse is, as a phenomenon, very much independent of the EU and its existence, let alone its membership composition.

Its specific European manifestation is also significant to this argument. Several European countries have increasingly shifted towards illiberal positions – not just in Eastern Europe, but also in the west. Track records on integration are negative all across the map. It is completely unfair – and in many ways gaslighting – to blame Eastern Europe for the halt to integration.

eastern Europe enlargement
Cartoon celebrating the 2004 enlargement

The UK undoubtedly holds the record of vetoes, exemptions, and red lines, covering a broad range of matters from collective defence to the single currency. London’s outright exemption from the principle of ever closer union was in itself an admission of defeat for serious prospects of political unification. Britain’s prominence, however, shouldn’t blind us to the obstacles placed by others. Britain itself was often an excellent alibi for other sceptical countries, allowing to entirely skirt discussion on topics like common defence because London had already vetoed them anyway.

Several European Member States didn’t even need this alibi to shoot down integration. France voted down the proposed European Constitution in a referendum. While it is currently busy trading thinly veiled accusations with Germany over who is falling short on what initiative, it has also displayed a dogged determination at patrolling its own borders in the wake of the refugee crisis. Denmark also has opt outs, and is profoundly sceptical of further integration. The Netherlands, Germany, and all Nordics are squarely against Eurozone reform, while their equivalents in Club Med are vehemently against aligning their policies to those required to make a banking union function.

The conclusion is inescapable: there is no popular legitimacy anywhere in Europe for more integration. But if European integration is dead in the water, who is the culprit? Curiously, very few political camps in the Union have actually owned up to the chronic lack of political will that allowed this to happen. Pointing fingers and outsourcing the blame is a popular strategy, but it leads down a dangerous road – one with no answers and an abundance of acrimony.

Eastern Europe Is Europe

When the discussion moves to the economy and workers’ movement, its ugliness becomes all the more apparent. A popular narrative, particularly among left-wing circles in Italy and France, is that the eastern enlargement was driven by companies in the quest for cheap labour. Reinterpreting the enlargement as a product of shadowy forces is a way of delegitimising it. The short-sightedness of this argument is so total that it’s hard to tackle what makes it so wrong.

The Single Market, of course, grants freedom to trade and move across the Union, and that naturally includes businesses. Ultimately, however, the Single Market is also about long-term economic convergence. Companies truly committed to a quest for cheap labour on meaningful time-scales go to South-East Asia – wages in eastern Europe will not remain low forever. Thirdly, and most importantly: businesses do not dictate EU policy, nor that of its Member States. There is no secret cabal of corporations who manipulate governments from the shadows.

There is little doubt that powerful economic actors like corporations have played a role in European integration, and that these same actors can count on powerful lobbyists. But this is part and parcel of political life in any democratic country. The belief that these actors could unilaterally drive a political undertaking of such a scale based on profit sheets alone is close to a conspiracy theory – the obsessive quest for an agent on whom to pin the blame.

eastern Europe enlargement
Celebrations in Brussels as ten former Eastern Bloc countries in Eastern Europe (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) acceeded the European Union.

Paradoxically, Eastern Europe tends to be a lot more outspoken than the West in its support for the EU in general, in spite of the sometimes stark disagreements over the rule of law and democratic values. This is no coincidence: for many of these Member States, the EU and NATO are a matter of survival, not of policy-making. With an aggressive Russia to the east, and a history of totalitarian dictatorship still eerily close in their past, there is little room for geopolitical experiments. Hungary is at present the only Member State in Eastern Europe bucking the trend, and openly adopting an openly friendly position towards Russia.

The entrance of Eastern Europe into the EU was a bold political act that took place within a limited window of opportunity. Together with NATO’s expansion, it banished the spectre of further Russian domination of the newly independent countries. Renouncing it over political rows is another classic example of the myopia that affects European political culture.

Meaningful Unity

Ultimately, playing the blame game by exploiting regional rivalries is the epytome of failures when it comes to integration discourse. European unity is about undoing the damage the continent wrought upon itself through two global conflicts and the Cold War. The latter in particular divided Europe in half for forty years, resulting in very different experiences, problems, and ways of looking at the world. The hypothetical future unification of Europe resembles the reunification of Germany, but on a much larger scale.

This can feel daunting – and so it should. The quest for peaceful, democratically legitimate European unity is an ambitious and unprecedented undertaking, one spanning many generations. This lofty goal cannot be meaningfully pursued without keeping an eye on the obstacles that lie on the road ahead. It will take decades to even start mitigating the damage done by forty years of division, Communist dictatorship, and foreign occupation of the eastern half of the continent. Playing the blame game, however, is one sure way of failing in this grand endeavour.

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Tullio Pontecorvo

Student of political science and international relations, co-founder of My Country? Europe. Aspiring sci-fi author. Believes shooting aliens in the face to be the ultimate form of gaming.

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