Incomes have risen but so have prices, creating hardship for many, writes Daniel McLaughlinin Budapest
HUNDREDS OF thousands of workers have moved west, tens of billions of euro in aid have come the other way, Slovakia and Slovenia now use the euro and laws devised in Brussels apply from the Baltic to the Black Sea – much has changed since the European Union expanded eastward five years ago today.
But the anniversary comes at a tough time for central Europe, as economic turmoil and political uncertainty dampen celebration of an event that was hailed as a long-awaited moment of reconciliation for a continent divided for more than four decades by the Iron Curtain.
The fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago marked the end of the Cold War and, 15 years later, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – comprising some 75 million people and 740,000sq km – were deemed to be strong enough free-market democracies to join the EU, along with Cyprus and Malta.
Since then, average incomes have risen in all the new member states, EU-financed projects have started to overhaul vast networks of ageing, Soviet-built infrastructure, and voices flatly opposing membership have been pushed to the margins of political discussion.
The old Skodas, Trabants and Ladas that once dominated central Europe’s roads have been replaced by western and Japanese saloons paid for in part by salaries that have grown by 35 per cent in the Czech Republic and Hungary, 50 per cent in Poland and doubled in Latvia and Lithuania.
And thanks to the Schengen Agreement to drop border controls across most of the EU, central Europeans can now take their cars to places that were once strictly off-limits.
“In 1989, a country like Czechoslovakia was surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers, and today you can get behind the wheel and drive without stopping once from Prague to Portugal,” Czech political analyst Jiri Pehe said. “It’s an amazing, amazing change – people don’t even realise anymore the profundity of this change.”
For all the benefits of life inside the EU, however, many of its new citizens feel like losers in the game of expansion.
Prices have risen along with wages, making life a struggle for pensioners and others who rely on benefits, and corruption is still rife in many new members states, each of which has a well-connected elite whose ostentatious wealth belies the poverty that still blights much of the region.
Many central Europeans also fear the drain of young, talented workers to countries like Britain and Ireland, where many are likely to remain, despite the economic downturn.
Others, familiar with the stultifying effect of Sovietisation, resent what they perceive as the EU’s drive to centralise power in Brussels and homogenise the bloc, eroding national distinctions, cultures and traditions in the name of everything from unity to efficiency to food safety.
Before joining the EU, leaders across central Europe tended to suggest everything would be fine once they had joined the club, and that hopes dashed by the harsh reality of the transition from communism to capitalism would at last be fulfilled when the continent was reunited within the EU.
Those leaders have paid for their overstatement. In the eight former communist countries, not one prime minister serving on May 1st, 2005, is still in office today, and several current premiers are barely clinging to power in the face of mounting disquiet over the bleak economic situation.
Protesters in Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and Bulgaria – which joined the EU with Romania in January 2007 – have clashed with police during recent demonstrations against their governments’ handling of the economic crisis, which in turn has raised questions about how the EU can help its members in times of trouble, and how strong a voice new member states have in decision-making.
Surveys show that central Europeans are overwhelmingly in favour of being part of the EU, although one recent study suggested that, unlike citizens in the other new member states, most Hungarians and Latvians thought their country would be better off outside the bloc.
Hungary and Latvia are now facing their worst recessions in 20 years and, while much anger is aimed at domestic leaders, plenty is also reserved for the global capitalist system and, by association, the EU.
“A lot of people here blame the EU for Hungary’s problems, and don’t feel like we’ve done as well as some of our neighbours out of membership,” said Budapest student Gergely Szegvari.
“Our leaders have made lots of mistakes, but we elected them so maybe it is partly our fault. It’s easier to blame someone on the outside for what is wrong here – like the EU.”
While new EU members bemoan the refusal of most older members to throw open completely their labour markets, and demand the fair application of EU laws and principles across the bloc, none seriously questions the economic benefits of being part of the world’s largest trading area.
“Thanks to the EU’s co-financing of major projects, construction of roads and motorways has picked up sharply in recent years, even if we’re now feeling the recession,” said Hungarian road-builder Zoltan Borgulya, noting the advantage of receiving aid in euro rather than the local forint, which has plunged in value recently.
“The EU provides 40-85 per cent of pre-financing in euro. This could [now] translate into 110 per cent financing of the project,” he said.
Even Poland’s farmers, who were some of the staunchest opponents of EU accession before 2004, are now firm supporters of membership.
“There has been an incredible change in the mentality of Polish farmers since we joined the EU,” said pig-breeder Dorota Olejniczak. “Some still aren’t willing to change and invest, but many more have really gone full steam ahead and are using EU subsidies to develop their farms.”
Five years ago, Poland had 2.2 million farms, many of them little more than allotments; now, it has about 1.4 million, and their average size and the income they generate are growing.
“The image of the Polish peasant using a horse and plough in his field – it still exists maybe in isolated mountain foothills – but that’s the past; the vast majority of farms in Poland are up to European standards,” said Wiktor Szmulewicz, president of Poland’s National Council of Agricultural Chambers.
“Everyone is eager to get the funds, farmers queue up,” he added. “They’re just upset they’re not getting as much as their [western] colleagues, and the full subsidy is still a far way off. It’s a sore point that there isn’t really fair competition in the common EU market.”
Despite the economic crisis, Eurosceptics are not making great ground in the new member states, although allies of Václav Klaus could yet vote down the Lisbon Treaty in the upper house of the Czech parliament this month.
Poland’s president Lech Kaczynski has been forced to tone down his anti-Brussels rhetoric since his twin brother’s government was ousted by liberals in 2007.
“The EU changed our lives completely. Our family is spread across three corners of Europe,” said Malgorzata Trala, a Krakow resident whose two children live in Ireland and England.
“The emigration of Poles, it’s good for Poland on the condition that they return one day,” she said. “We need to air out the country. We have nearly 50 years of communism behind us.”