History Begins (Again)

Here is the latest New Europe column on Transitions Online.

History Begins (Again)

The accession era is over. But the need for reform in the youngest EU states isn’t.

BUDAPEST | Has History finally been kind to Eastern Europe?

In other words, has it ended?

Well, we thought that for a while. Communism was finally out with its drab urban landscape, its somehow black-and-white color TVs, its oppressive air, its weary yet stomach-churning sense of having to live far away from the real world, locked behind those humiliating border checkpoints manned by our own people.

Capitalism was then in, coming with its nice, friendly brother, liberal democracy and the constitution-guaranteed right not to get kicked in the teeth by political police. And then came NATO and the European Union, ultimate guarantors of freedom, safety, and plenty, models of how the new Europe should look: cooperative, peaceful, stable, civilized, rich. History, in other words, ended.

Or, rather, as it became apparent on the hooligan-and-riot-police infested and very eventful streets of Budapest in October 2006, a few days after it was discovered, in a decidedly humiliating fashion, that the prime minister was a liar, delivering his very own kick-in-the-teeth to his fellow citizens and some of their ideals, well, it became apparent that History in fact had other plans.

It had merely stopped to catch its breath, to collect itself, to check its advance. It cunningly peeked around the corner, winked, Groucho Marx-like, into the camera, then burst out from behind the wall, knocking us down with a massive blow to whichever part of the brain analyzes social, economic, and political trends.

This, essentially, is the conclusion, put in a somewhat less laid-back fashion, of a much-quoted report produced late last year by the Berlin-based Hertie School of Governance. Its author, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, bemoans the reform fatigue that seems to reach new members of the European Union the moment they cross the threshold to membership.

Even worse, she says, things have started to slide back, especially in the political sphere. Most new members are experiencing the advance of populist groups, political radicalization (resulting in weak political cooperation and instability), weak majorities and hence unstable governments, factional behavior (leading to further political instability) plus occasional acts that violate democratic standards (such as attempts to influence justice or restrict the rights of political opponents).

“In the textbooks on democratic transition, Central and Eastern Europe provides the model of success. Yet in Brussels … concern over the politics of the new members has been mounting,” the report says. “Scenes of opposition-backed demonstrators blocking a major bridge and trying to bring down the government through an insurrection on the streets reminded one more of Kyrgyzstan than of [Budapest],” it adds.

The report doesn’t really attempt to analyze exactly what’s wrong with the region. It only suggests that it has something to do with the infantile behavior and short-termism of its elites, its relative poverty that makes it susceptible to economic populism, plus the inflated expectations of its people.

Quite right. One could go on, of course. But the really interesting thing about this report is that it points to two important weaknesses in the enlargement strategy of the EU which are crucial to understand if we are to expand further east.

One is that “the day after accession, when conditionality has faded, the influence of the EU vanishes like a short-term anesthetic,” says the report. That is because once a state is in, there is very little you can blackmail it with – which is essentially what the accession process is about. You reform your judiciary, you little brat, or no pudding (the pudding being a multibillion-euro development package that comes with membership).

I remember one diplomat from a new member state telling me happily in late 2004 that “before we were in, we used to hang on their every word. … The only thing in the world for us was the European Commission. Now that we’re in, we hardly pay any attention to them.”

This is an exaggeration. The commission is still an important player in the EU system. But the principle is right. It is very hard to get member states to do anything against their will. This was in fact recognized by the EU by the time of the Romanian and Bulgarian accession and Brussels retains certain disciplinary tools over these states.

A BAR ASSOCIATION

The other problem is that accession talks oversimplify the process of westernization (which is what EU accession is, essentially). Brussels sees the process as a chiefly legal and institutional one. A catching-up done by lawyers. The so-called “negotiations” are barely more than EU lawyers telling accession-country lawyers what legal acts to adopt.

This is very important because the process builds the necessary institutions without which there’d be no accession – or indeed union. Jean Monnet said that nothing is possible without men but nothing is lasting without institutions. He must have also known that no institution can function well without at least some right-thinking men – otherwise Syria and North Korea, endowed with beautifully crafted liberal constitutions, would be the most democratic states in the world.

That is where the process comes up short and that is why History hasn’t ended in Eastern Europe. Egon Dienes-Oehm, former Hungarian ambassador to the EU and an important player throughout the accession talks, remarked, “Enlargement was a political project and executed quite swiftly. [The old member states] wanted us and we wanted them – this had been decided. The accession negotiations helped us adopt their technical standards, conform to their structure. But from a sociological point of view, a lot has been left undone.”

I put this to an official in the European Commission who said that they realized there was a problem here but that the highly technical nature of the organization, plus the political sensibilities of members, made it difficult for them to do much. “The EU sees and treats its member states as grown-ups. If you’re in, you are presumed to adhere to certain constitutional and democratic norms. We might be aware that something is wrong but as long as the house is not on fire, life will go on just the same. This is a very technical organization. We are focusing on the particulars: Is the convergence program on track? Are preparations for Schengen on track? We are only interested in your political situation insofar as it affects your promises and pledges to the EU.”

These lessons must be considered carefully when it comes to further enlargement. If people think the new member states are in a bad shape, they have to think again. These are civilized states with long exposure to the economic, political, and cultural currents of Western Europe. Other than disparities in wealth, they are not essentially different from older members.

But further out to the east and the south, the former Soviet and Ottoman lands of Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia, Macedonia, and Turkey – and Romania and Bulgaria – are. Very much so. They are much poorer, their wild-west, burn-the-house-down capitalism has little to do with the gentlemanly commercialism of the West. They have little or no tradition of liberal democratic politics. Their historical experience is drastically different from that of Europe. Whatever root problems the new member states now have – infantile, short-termist elites, poor populations susceptible to economic populism – these countries have tenfold. And will continue to have for decades to come.

Mungiu-Pippidi’s report on the newest EU states closes on a depressing but realistic note. “The political problems in these countries … are completely unrelated to EU accession. They were there to start with, though they were hidden or pushed aside because of the collective concentration on reaching the accession target. … Now that countries in the region have acceded to the EU, we see Central and Eastern Europe as it really is – a region that has come far but still has a way to go.”

History, over or not, weighs heavily here.