© REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko

When Belarusians went to the polls on November 17, 2019 to elect a new lower house of the bicameral National Assembly, they didn’t elect one single opposition politician among the 110 MPs—a step back compared to previous elections in 2016, when two opposition politicians, Hanna Konopatskaya and Alena Anisim, won seats. And according to the OSCE electoral observation mission, the elections yet again failed to meet several important international standards, just as they have failed to do over the past two decades.

Then again, the presence or otherwise of opposition MPs in the parliament has little real meaning as the parliament plays an extremely limited, largely symbolic role in Belarus. This dates back to 1996, when President Alexander Lukashenko pushed through, via a flawed referendum, a new constitution which effectively replaced the earlier functioning parliament after the Supreme Soviet of Belarus (as it was then called) had refused to extend his presidential powers.

Since then, the new National Assembly has been composed mostly of Lukashenko’s supporters, and has had very limited powers. The president can easily bypass the parliament, and oversight is also very weak, because the government is only accountable to the president. Also, the president can dissolve the parliament at any time, as Lukashenko did when he announced new elections on August 5, cutting the term of the previous parliament by a year.

No Mass Repression

In short: Nothing much has changed with the elections. Of course, the situation of democratic rights and fundamental freedoms must not be ignored, particularly while addressing the situation in Belarus from the European Union’s perspective. The sole, at least partially positive aspect is that election-related political violence remained minor and sporadic, with occasional arrests, but no mass repressions. One may argue, of course, that the Belarusian system has a unique feature of post-electoral repression, meaning that the real suppression of the opposition takes place only some time after the elections, when international attention has subsided. Nevertheless, if compared to the infamous scenes of 2006 and 2010, when security forces attacked opposition demonstrators with brutal force, there has been an improvement, or at least no backsliding since 2016 when things also remained calm.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the Belarusian regime was divided on how to handle the opposition, i.e. whether to allow them to possibly win a few seats in the parliament or not. More liberal representatives of the elites argued that providing the opposition with some mandates would do no harm politically, given that the parliament is toothless, but would be highly welcomed by the West. Contrary to this, conservative elites, including the KGB pushed for not allowing the opposition to gain strength in any way, already having the upcoming presidential elections in mind. They argued that negative reactions from the West would remain limited given the overall geopolitical situation. Apparently, the hardline group won the upper hand.

Tough Choices for the EU

This has placed the EU in an inconvenient position. The careful political rapprochement that has been going on between Brussels and Minsk since 2014 has not been conditioned on democratic development at all. There is no valid Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) with Belarus, since its ratification was suspended in 1997 in reaction to the rapid anti-democratic backsliding of the regime.

As Belarusian Foreign Minister Uladzimir Makei stated during a talk at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin on October 21, 2019, Minsk has long been looking for cooperation opportunities, that do not require a PCA to be in place, such as closer relations with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and visa facilitation. Under such circumstances, motivated also by the fundamentally changed geopolitical environment following Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, the EU has set no conditions for further developing relations with Belarus, implicit, of course, within the framework of the absent PCA.

Now, given the latest election result, the EU is facing a tough choice. Cutting back the ongoing, limited cooperation projects would harm the EU’s geopolitical interests, because curtailing Minsk’s slow, careful opening to the West would almost automatically result in Belarus turning even more firmly to China, to seek a counterbalance to Russia’s power.

Besides, from a legal perspective it would be somewhat odd to argue for such a move, since the 2019 parliamentary elections were no more anti-democratic than the previous ones. OSCE election observers reported several, and similarly serious concerns in both 2016 and 2019. Why punish Belarus now, if the EU did not do so after the elections three years ago?

Symbolic Cost of Inaction

The problem is the symbolic costs of inaction. Not reacting could be interpreted by some as an indication that the EU in fact cares very little about democratic rights and fundamental freedoms in Belarus. Creating such an impression should be avoided, because it would affect the credibility of the EU not only among the Belarusian population, but also in other Eastern Partnership countries.

However, it is realpolitik that shapes the actual choice. While not giving up on its values, Brussels can have no interest in pushing Minsk even more into China’s open arms, nor would it want to weaken Belarusian efforts to resist the pressure from Russian President Vladimir Putin who has tried to hug Lukashenko as close as possible in the past. Hence, the clearly disappointed, but otherwise mild post-election statement of the European External Action Service is most probably the toughest step the EU is going to take.

This has all proven those in Belarus right who see geopolitics as the all-deciding factor. Weakening the opposition by depriving them of their parliamentary representation will be important in the upcoming 2020 presidential elections. Lukashenko has already announced his candidacy; however, it is not yet known, what to expect from Russia.

What the Kremlin Wants

Full integration of Russia and Belarus—hinted at from time to time by both sides—is highly unlikely, for two reasons. The Kremlin can well do without the political, economic, financial, social, and military burdens that any real integration would entail, and the Belarusian elites will not agree to giving up the sovereignty of their own country.

Hence, the Kremlin will likely want to keep Lukashenko as president and guarantor of Belarus’ stability, but to weaken him to a considerable extent. If successful, this strategy would allow Moscow to further strengthen its political and economic influence over Minsk, but without putting extra strains on Russia’s already overstretched budget. The upcoming months will tell  how will Russia try to realize these objectives.

The post Geopolitics, As Usual appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

Eastern Europe is a region more internally divided than any other part of the continent. It is homogeneous only in ethnic terms—its population is almost entirely white (apart from some Roma populations in some countries), which makes it rather exceptional and ill-suited to the realities of a globalized world.

When modern national identities were emerging, most of today’s Eastern European countries were not even on the map. Their most prominent nationals were citizens of other countries, and their broader populations were generally poorly educated and politically disenfranchised. The common experience that ultimately united Czechs, Poles, Romanians, and Hungarians was communism.

The 19th-century experience of struggles for independence has made Eastern European countries more nationalistic and more sensitive to issues of sovereignty, while the experience of communism (which was often more nationalist than leftist) has discredited the political left. The legacy of communism is that the region is poorer, more backward, more corrupt, and cut off from immigration.

Eastern European countries also differ from their Western neighbors in terms of their economic model. They lack the experience of the postwar welfare state. Meanwhile, the fall of communism came at the height of faith in neoliberalism, which is why the capitalism that was introduced in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary (as well as Russia) is far more neoliberal that its equivalent in Germany, France, or Italy.

The Narcissism of Small Differences

All of these factors serve to differentiate Eastern Europe from the West and underlie its classification as one cultural-political region. But this is a region dominated by the narcissism of small differences, where no country wants to be compared to the others because they all aspire to join the West. Every country in the region suffers from the complexes of backward and aspiring countries, meaning that they are all constantly competing with each other in an attempt to prove they are better than their neighbors.

For example, the Poles look down on the Czechs for not having fought hard enough for their country, while the Czechs disdain the Poles for constantly engaging in battles that cannot be won. The Poles see their country as the region’s natural leader because it is larger and more populous. But no one else sees Poland in that role. The Czechs see themselves as the most modern and most Western nation in the region. Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Baltics are in the eurozone. The Hungarians, meanwhile, are the only ones in the region who have international ambitions: Viktor Orbán wants to be the leader of Europe’s populist right. Jarosław Kaczyński wants Europe to leave him alone, but he joins Orbán in his campaigns from time to time.

Eastern European societies know much less about each other than they do about Germany or Austria. Language, religion, culture—there is much more that divides us than unites us. This is true even for the historic incorporation into empires. The territories of today’s Poland belonged to three empires at various times, which is still evident in railway and road infrastructure, and even in voting patterns.

Monastery, Mob, or Madhouse

The common experiences of 19th-century nationalism and 20th-century communism make the region far more populist than Western Europe. But the region’s internal differences also mean that it is home to entirely different brands of populism.

Poland’s populism is ideological, while the Czech Republic’s resembles the iconic Czech literary character Josef Švejk in that it is half-witted and bumbling, and therefore less threatening. Hungary, meanwhile, has gangster populism. Poland’s ruling party, the Law and Justice Party (PiS), is like a monastery, Hungary’s Fidesz is like the mob, and Andrej Babiš’s ANO is like a madhouse. The populism of Slovakia’s former prime minister, Robert Fico, does not resemble anything—it is an invisible populism, although it involves the rather surreal element of cooperation with the Italian mafia. Fico’s invisible populism has proven the least populist, and fostered economic growth in Slovakia. On the other hand, it has also proved the most murderous—only Slovakia has experienced the killing of a journalist, most likely with the involvement of businessmen cooperating with government authorities.

As political scientists Martin Eiermann, Yascha Mounk, and Limor Gultchin of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change have shown, only in Europe’s post-communist east do populists routinely beat traditional parties in elections. Of 15 Eastern European countries, populist parties currently hold power in seven, are part of a ruling coalition in two more, and are the main opposition force in three.

Eiermann, Mounk, and Gultchin also point out that whereas populist parties captured 20 percent or more of the vote in only two Eastern European countries in 2000, today they have done so in 10 countries. In Poland, populist parties have gone from winning a mere 0.1 percent of the vote in 2000 to the current PiS government winning two consecutive parliamentary majorities. And in Hungary, support for Prime Minister Orbán’s Fidesz party has at times exceeded 70 percent.

Liberalism Is a Western Import

Hard data aside, we need to consider the underlying social and political factors that have made populism so much stronger in Eastern Europe. For starters, Eastern Europe lacks the tradition of checks and balances that has long safeguarded Western democracy. Unlike Poland’s de facto ruler, PiS chairman Kaczyński, Donald Trump does not ignore judicial decisions (so far, at least).

Or consider Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. Mueller was appointed by US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a government official who is subordinate to Trump within the executive branch. But while Trump has the authority to fire Mueller or Rosenstein, he didn’t dare to do so. The same cannot be said for Kaczyński.

Another major difference is that Eastern Europeans tend to hold more materialist attitudes than Westerners, who have moved beyond concerns about physical security to embrace what sociologist Ronald Inglehart calls post-materialist values. One aspect of this difference is that Eastern European societies are more vulnerable to attacks on abstract liberal institutions such as freedom of speech and judicial independence.

This shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, liberalism in Eastern Europe is a Western import. Notwithstanding the Trump and Brexit phenomena, the United States and the United Kingdom have deeply embedded cultures of political and social liberalism. In Eastern Europe, civil society is not just weaker; it is also more focused on areas such as charity, religion, and leisure, rather than political issues.

Attractive for Losers and Winners

Moreover, in the vastly different political landscapes of Europe’s post-communist states, the left is either very weak or completely absent from the political mainstream. The political dividing line, then, is not between left and right, but between right and wrong. As a result, Eastern Europe is much more prone to the “friend or foe” dichotomy conceived by the anti-liberal German political and legal theorist Carl Schmitt. Each side conceives of itself as the only real representative of the nation and treats its opponents as illegitimate alternatives who should be disenfranchised, not merely defeated.

Another major difference between Eastern and Western European populists is that the former can count on support not only from the working class, but also from the middle class. According to research conducted by Maciej Gdula published in Krytyka Polityczna, political attitudes in Poland do not align with whether one benefited or lost out during the country’s post-communist economic transformation. The ruling party’s electorate includes many who are generally satisfied with their lives, and are benefitting from the country’s development.

For such voters, the appeal of the populist message lies in its provision of an overarching narrative in which to organize positive and negative experiences. This creates a sense of purpose, as it ties voters more strongly to the party. Voters do not develop their own opinions about the courts, refugees, or the opposition based on their own experiences. Instead, they listen to the leader, adjusting their views according to their political choices.

The success of the PiS, therefore, is rooted not in frustrated voters’ economic interests. For the working class, the desire for a sense of community is the major consideration. For their middle-class counterparts, it is the satisfaction that arises not from material wealth, but from pointing to someone who is perceived as inferior, from refugees to depraved elites to cliquish judges. Orbán and Kaczyński are experts in capitalizing on this longing.

Dissimilar Twins

Stalin, in the first decade of Soviet power, backed the idea of “socialism in one country,” meaning that, until conditions ripened, socialism was for the USSR alone. When Orbán declared, in July 2014, his intention to build an “illiberal democracy,” it was widely assumed that he was creating “illiberalism in one country.” Now, Orbán and Kaczyński have proclaimed a counter-revolution aimed at turning the European Union into an illiberal project.

After a day of grinning, backslapping bonhomie at the 2018 Krynica conference, which styles itself a regional Davos (Orbán was named its Man of the Year), Kaczyński and Orbán announced that they would lead 100 million Europeans in a bid to remake the EU along nationalist/religious lines. One might imagine Václav Havel, a previous honoree, turning in his grave at the pronouncement. And former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, another previous winner, must be aghast: her country is being ravaged by Russia under President Vladimir Putin, the pope of illiberalism and role model for Kaczyński and Orbán.

The two men intend to seize the opportunity presented by the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum, which demonstrated that, in today’s EU, illiberal democrats’ preferred mode of discourse—lies and smears—can be politically and professionally rewarding. The fusion of the two men’s skills could make them a more potent threat than many Europeans may realize.

What Orbán brings to the partnership is clear: a strain of “pragmatic” populism. He has aligned his Fidesz party with the European People’s Party (the group in the European Parliament that brings together conventional, center-right parties including Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU), which keeps him formally within the political mainstream and makes the German chancellor an ally who provides political protection, despite Orbán’s illiberal governance. Kaczyński, however, chose to ally the PiS with the marginal Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, and he quarrels almost ceaselessly with Germany and the European Commission.

Cynic vs. Fanatic

Moreover, Orbán has more of the common touch than his Polish partner. Like Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister who has served as President of the European Council since 2014 (and whose tenure is about to end), he plays soccer with other politicians. Kaczyński, by contrast, is something of a hermit, who lives alone and spends his evenings watching Spanish rodeo on TV. He seems to live outside of society, whereas his supporters seem to place him above it—the ascetic messiah of a Poland reborn.

It is this mystical fervor that Kaczyński brings to his partnership with the opportunistic Orbán. It is a messianism forged from Polish history—a sense that the nation has a special mission for which God has chosen it, with the proof to be found in Poland’s especially tragic history. Uprisings, war, partitions: these are the things a Pole should think about every day.

A messianic identity favors a certain type of leader—one who, like Putin, appears to be animated by a sense of mission (in Putin’s case, it is the same mission proclaimed by the czars: orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality). So, whereas Orbán is a cynic, Kaczyński is a fanatic for whom pragmatism is a sign of weakness. Orbán would never act against his own interests; Kaczyński has done so many times. By attacking members of his own coalition government, for example, Kaczyński lost power in 2007, only two years after he had won it. He seems to have no plans. Instead, he has visions—not of fiscal reform or economic restructuring, but of a new type of Poland.

Orbán seeks nothing of the kind. He doesn’t want to create a new-model Hungary; his only aim is to remain, like Putin, in power for the rest of his life. Having governed as a liberal in the 1990s (paving the way for Hungary to join both NATO and the EU) and lost, Orbán regards illiberalism as the means to win until he takes his last breath.

Different Motives, Identical Methods

Kaczyński’s illiberalism is of the soul. He calls those outside his camp “the worst sort of Poles.” Homo Kaczynskius is a Pole preoccupied with his country’s fate, and who bares his teeth at critics and dissenters, particularly foreign ones. Gays and lesbians cannot be true Poles. All non-Polish elements within Poland are viewed as a threat. The PiS government has not accepted a single refugee of the tiny number—just 7,500—that Poland, a country of nearly 40 million, agreed with the EU to take in.

Despite having different motivations for embracing illiberalism, Kaczyński and Orbán agree that, in practical terms, it means building a new national culture. State-funded media are no longer public, but rather “national.” By eliminating civil-service exams, offices can be filled with loyalists and party hacks. The education system is being turned into a vehicle for fostering identification with a glorious and tragic past. Only cultural enterprises that praise the nation should receive public funding.

For Kaczyński, foreign policy is a function of historical policy. Here, the two men do differ: whereas Orbán’s pragmatism keeps him from antagonizing his European and US partners excessively, Kaczyński is uninterested in geopolitical calculation. After all, a messiah does not trim his beliefs or kowtow; he lives to proclaim the truth.

So, for the most part, Kaczyński’s foreign policy is a tendentious history seminar. Poland was betrayed by the West. Its strength—today and always—comes from pride, dignity, courage, and absolute self-reliance. Its defeats are moral victories that prove the nation’s strength and courage, enabling it, like Christ, to return from the dead after 123 years of absence from the map of Europe.

The Four Lessons of Populist Rule

The conventional view of populism posits that an erratic ruler will enact contradictory policies that primarily benefit the rich. The poor will lose, because populists have no hope of restoring manufacturing jobs, despite their promises. And massive inflows of migrants and refugees will continue, because populists have no plan to address the problem’s root causes. In the end, populist governments, incapable of effective rule, will crumble and their leaders will either face impeachment or fail to win re-election.

Kaczyński faced similar expectations. Liberal Poles thought that he would work for the benefit of the rich, create chaos, and quickly trip himself up—which is exactly what happened between 2005 and 2007, when PiS last governed Poland. But the liberals were wrong: PiS has transformed itself from an ideological nullity into a party that has managed to introduce shocking changes with record speed and efficiency. In fact, recent years have brought us four lessons about what makes populist rule more durable.

First, no neoliberalism. Between 2005 and 2007, PiS implemented neoliberal economic policies (for example, eliminating the highest income-tax bracket and the estate tax). But since returning to power in 2015, it has enacted the largest social transfers in Poland’s contemporary history. Parents now receive a 500 złoty ($120) monthly benefit for every child. As a direct result, the poverty rate has declined by 20 to 40 percent, and by 70 to 90 percent among children. And that’s just the most discussed example. In 2016, the government introduced free medication for people over the age of 75. The retirement age has been reduced from 67 for both men and women to 60 for women and 65 for men. The government is also planning tax relief for low-income taxpayers.

The 500 złoty child subsidy has changed the political paradigm in Poland. Now, no electoral promise that is not formulated as a direct offer of cash can have any hope of appealing to voters. PiS won big in the European elections in May 2019 thanks to its promise of paying out a 13th month of retirement benefits, which was enacted a week before voters went to the polls. In the campaign ahead of the Polish parliamentary elections in October 2019 the party ran on a promise of almost doubling the minimum salary (from 2250 złoty in 2019 to 3000 złoty in 2020 and 4000 złoty in 2023).

Second, the restoration of “order.” Independent institutions are the most important enemy of populism. Populist leaders are control freaks. For populists, it is liberal democracy that leads to chaos, which must be “put in order” by a “responsible government.” Media pluralism leads to informational chaos. An independent judiciary means legal chaos. Independent public administration creates institutional chaos. And a robust civil society is a recipe for chronic bickering and conflict.

But populists believe that such chaos does not emerge by itself. It is the work of perfidious foreign powers and their domestic puppets. To “make Poland great again,” the nation’s heroes must defeat its traitors, who are not equal contenders for power. Populist leaders are thus obliged to limit their opponents’ rights. Indeed, their political ideal is not order, but rather the subordination of all independent bases of power that could challenge them: courts, media, business, cultural institutions, NGOs, and so forth.

Third, electoral dictatorship. Populists know how to win elections, but their conception of democracy extends no further. On the contrary, populists view the separation of government powers, minority rights, and independent media—all staples of liberalism—as an attack on majority rule, and therefore on democracy itself.

The political ideal that a populist government strives for is essentially an elected dictatorship. And recent US experience suggests that this can be a sustainable model. After all, everything depends on how those in power decide to organize elections, which can include redrawing voting districts or altering the rules governing campaign finance or political advertisements. Elections can be falsified imperceptibly.

Fourth, might makes right. Populists have benefited from disseminating fake news, slandering their opponents, and promising miracles that mainstream media treat as normal campaign claims. But it is a mistake to think that truth is an effective weapon against post-truth. In a post-truth world, it is power, not fact-checking, that is decisive. Whoever is most ruthless and has the fewest scruples wins.

To Defeat Populism, Be Ruthless

Populists are both unseemly and ascendant. Trump’s supporters, for example, have come to view tawdriness as evidence of credibility, whereas comity, truth, and reason are evidence of elitism. Those who would resist populism must come to terms with the fact that truth is not enough. They must also display determination and ruthlessness, though without becoming the mirror image of their opponents.

In postmodernity, nationalism does not disappear into thin air. Unfortunately, in Poland and elsewhere, the only ideology that has survived in the post-ideological era is nationalism. By appealing to nationalist sentiment, populists have gained support everywhere, regardless of the economic system or situation, because this sentiment is being fueled externally, namely by the influx of migrants and refugees. It does not have to be real; imagined dangers also work well. Polish anti-Semitism does not need Jews, anti-communism works without communists. Another good example are anti-migration feelings, which can be whipped up without a single migrant or refugee around.

Mainstream politicians, especially on the left, have no effective message on the issue. Opposing migration contradicts their ideals, while supporting it means electoral defeat.

But the choice should be clear. Either populism’s opponents drastically change their rhetoric regarding migrants and refugees, or the populists will continue to rule in Eastern Europe. Migrants and refugees lose in either scenario, but in the second, liberal democracy does as well. Such calculations are ugly—and, yes, corrosive of liberal values—but the populists, as we have seen, are capable of far nastier trade-offs.

Kaczyński had succeeded in establishing control over two issues near and dear to voters: social transfers and nationalism. As long as he controls these two bastions of voter sentiment, he is safe.

The post Eastern Differences appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Radovan Stoklasa

The year 2019 marks a double-anniversary of two interconnected historic events: 30 years since the fall of the Iron Curtain, and 15 years of EU eastern enlargement.

In 1989, democratic revolutions from East Berlin to Bucharest toppled local communist regimes and buried the Cold War international order. For the societies in Central and Eastern Europe, the annus mirabilis, the miraculous year of 1989, generated many hopes and expectation; it also led to many disappointments and brought a lot of pain.

Fifteen years later came the accession to the EU. It gave the Central and Eastern European countries a special boost, including financial support in the form of Cohesion Fund inflows, as well as a political anchor. The economic development that followed is remarkable. It’s worth recalling that with the exception of the Czech Republic and Slovenia as well as the western parts of Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, the region used to be long-term economic underachievers. Disadvantaged by frequent political disruptions, border changes, and social upheavals, they were stacked at Europe’s periphery. Poland’s per capita GDP, for instance, from the 17th century until recently was almost always below 50 percent of Western Europe’s average level. Now it’s only 25 percent below the EU average, and the gap keeps narrowing.

Former World Bank economist Marcin Piatkowski in his ground-breaking book Poland’s New Golden Age showed that after 1995, the country became the fastest growing economy in the world among larger countries at similar levels of development, beating even South Korea and Taiwan. Next to South-East Asia, there is hardly any other region that has benefited so much from globalization as the new EU members in Central and Eastern Europe, at least in statistical terms.

Of course, this development also greatly benefited Germany, and Europe as a whole. Incorporating new markets of more than 100 million people and their fast-growing open economies into international value chains helped Western European companies to expand, reduce costs, and stay competitive globally.

Can this continue?

Root Causes and Limits

Even if the pace of catching-up with Western Europe has slowed down since the financial crisis of 2008, some basic factors of the economic success will not change, such as geographic proximity. The combined trade volume of the four Visegrád countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary) with Germany last year was €290 billion, far ahead of China (€199 billion) or the Netherlands (€189 billion). Poland alone is set to overtake the United Kingdom and Italy and will likely become one of Germany’s top trading partners this year or next. The volume of German-Hungarian trade is larger than German-Russian trade, and German trade with Slovakia, the smallest of the Visegrád countries (and a member of the eurozone) is twice as large as what Germany trades with G7 member Canada.

The German automobile industry, in particular, has turned the country’s eastern neighbors into a manufacturing hub. The knock-on effect was felt in December 2018 when a strike in an engine factory in Györ, Hungary (supported, by the way, by the German trade union IG Metall) forced Audi to shut down production at its headquarters in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, for several days. Interestingly, Audi’s Hungarian employees demanded a wage raise to put them on a par with workers at other Volkswagen/Audi facilities in Central Europe, not with what their German colleagues earn.

This illustrates several things: There is successful economic convergence, but the benefits may not be evenly distributed. Wage convergence in particular has not been as strong as that of GDP per capita levels, reflecting that much of the profits generated in CEE markets are taken out by foreign companies.

Yet political convergence, or that of democratic institutions, has been much slower. In some parts of the region, notably in Hungary, it has even gone into reverse. The EU institutions have proved ill-equipped for combatting such backsliding. Furthermore, they haven’t managed to limit creeping state capture or corruption. Political tensions between EU institutions or Western EU members and the newer eastern members will therefore remain high, but this is unlikely to harm their economic development.

At the same time, given the level of interconnectedness, isolationist policies in Central and Eastern Europe will not work anymore.  Hungary’s leader Viktor Orbán always knew this; his Polish counter-part Jarosław Kaczynski in recent years had to learn it the hard way. What is missing, however, is greater interest and a willingness to engage by the other side: with the exception of those two trouble-makers, Poland and Hungary, the rest of the countries are still largely taken for granted by Germany’s political class.

What Next?

Looking ahead, as the saying goes, the future is no longer what it used to be. There are six key determinants in particular that will likely shape Central and Eastern Europe’s future course.

First, there is the future of globalization. After 1989, the region greatly benefited from the liberal world order and the expansion of free trade. Current winds are blowing in the opposite direction. Conflicts over trade and technology between the United States and China fuel a broader process of de-globalization. Europe is caught in the middle, defending multilateralism and depending on both giants. The small, export-oriented economies of Central and Eastern Europe with their heavy reliance on manufacturing are especially vulnerable to a recession in Germany or a global slowdown. So far, the countries have not been tested by a prolonged downturn.

Second, there is the question of whether the countries are capable of upgrading their business model, as the old one is coming under huge pressure. Instead of high unemployment and cheap labor in abundance, there are now acute labor shortages. At the same time, as research by the Vienna Institute for International Economy (WIIW) shows, a large part of production ranges at the bottom of the value and supply chain, and this is limiting the region’s potential to further catch up with Western Europe. Morphing into a more automated and digital economy will likely add to the problem, unless it is offset by more diverse growth and higher levels of public investment in research and education.

Third, and related, the impact of technological transformation on key industrial sectors, including the switch to electric cars and artificial intelligence, will be huge. There is also the transition to cleaner, low carbon energy. German industry and energy companies have already started this process, and it is not clear what consequences it will have for their suppliers and partners in Central and Eastern Europe.

Fourth, the countries have to manage demographic decline. EU accession has opened the doors to a dramatic emigration from the region. Many countries have already lost a large share of their population of productive age to Western Europe. Many Central and Eastern European societies are aging rapidly, while the workforce is shrinking, as young and skilled people continue to leave. Last year, Germany’s population reached a record high of more than 83 million people, with net immigration of some 400,000; more than half of the new arrivals came from Central and Eastern Europe (Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland topping the list of countries of origin). As a consequence, the countries themselves will need to become more open for migration. In spite of the current government’s anti-migration rhetoric, Poland has quietly become a global leader in accepting seasonal workers (some two million from Ukraine, and also an increasing number of Asians). However, there is little policy planning for those who decide to stay after their permit expires, while Poland’s labor market is projected to be short of an additional 1.5 million people by 2030.

A Call for Good Governance

Fifth, the countries need to keep their societies inclusive. A large part of Central and Eastern Europeans are living in the countryside. Fewer than 60 percent of Poles, Croats, Romanians, Slovaks and Slovenes are citydwellers (the EU average is around 75 percent), which gives political strength to rural voters. In the post-1989 period, large cities were usually the breeding grounds of economic development, while the countryside felt more disconnected and abandoned. The urban-rural divide deepened after the financial crisis of 2008, as rural areas became strongholds of populist leaders. Government policies and public investment into infrastructure and social policy programs will determine to what extent these aging and changing societies can be kept open and inclusive. This applies also to ethnic minorities and the Roma population, which is projected to rise to 20 percent of the populations of Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria by 2050.

The sixth and crucial factor is quality of governance and the future behavior of political elites. As the challenges become more complex and multifaceted, policy responses formulated in capitals from Prague to Sofia will require more engagement on all levels of the state administration, economy, and society. The alternative model is the top-down approach pushed by authoritarian leaders in Budapest and Warsaw. However, quality, transparency, and inclusiveness of policy-making are likely to improve with younger generations. Over the next decade, we are likely to witness a more diverse region emerging.

Time to Reengage

A new generation is now coming to power in Central and Eastern Europe. Many of them are too young to remember 1989, but they will nevertheless reconnect with the ideas and political legacy of its proponents. They lack experience and EU networks, but are largely guided by a strong sense of EU togetherness and co-ownership.

This is also a chance for Berlin to reengage with this neighboring region. What is still lacking 30 years after is a stronger political partnership, based on permanent dialogue platforms between Berlin and Central and Eastern European capitals (preferably outside of closed diplomatic channels) that would structurally connect political and economic aspects of their bilateral relationship. It would be a great achievement if the upcoming celebrations of these anniversaries would generate a new purpose of working together for a more cohesive EU.

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© Agencja Gazeta/Slawomir Kaminski via REUTERS

What is happening to Central and Eastern Europe? Sometimes even well informed observers find it difficult to articulate in which political direction the countries east of the river Elbe are heading today. Their development for over two decades after 1989 seemed comprehensible. Although some managed it better and others fared worse, the quest of equivalence with Western Europe gave everyone one clear goal.

Today, it appears that Central and Eastern Europe has ceased to exist as a distinct political entity. Indeed, it is impossible to present a more diversified image. Hungary has been under Viktor Orbán’s rule for several years, increasingly moving away from democracy toward a mild authoritarian regime. In 2014, on the 25th anniversary of the democratic revolution, The Economist hailed Poland as the greatest achievement of democratic transformation; now, to many observers it seems as if it decided to ignore its historic opportunity. However, there are also countries where liberal democracy is doing well. Although skeptical of the European Union, the Czech government has not violated the liberal legal order. Slovakia as well offers hope: just a few months ago, a progressive politician Zuzana Czaputowa won the presidential election.

No other part of Europe, however, is depicted in such broad generalizations. Of course, the adverse news, which mainly concern Poland and Hungary, have darkened the whole picture. From the Western perspective, the image of these countries permeates the entire region, creating a belief that in Central and Eastern Europe, we are dealing now with an illiberal, undemocratic, and even authoritarian wave, which has destroyed the hard-won accomplishments of democratic transformation.

Such superficial assessments actually refer to specific governments, but they affect how societies as a whole are. The countries are being put on par with Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, or even compared to the fascist countries of the 1920s and 1930s. The victims of such reasoning are not only the defenders of liberal democracy in those countries where it is really under threat, but also other Central and Eastern European states, including those which have enjoyed stable political systems since they were introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some disgruntled critics in the West have even started to vociferously claim that the so-called eastern enlargement of the European Union was premature or even completely unnecessary.

The Myth of the West

The 30^th anniversary of democratic transformation in Central and Eastern Europe offers a great opportunity to diagnose what is actually happening in this region.

According to Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th-century French political philosopher, revolutions do not erupt when societies are in their deepest crisis. On the contrary, they happen when circumstances improve. This statement appears to prove true for some countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Some of these states have never been in a better situation, economically and with a view to the quality of life. All of the post-communist countries that became EU members in the 2000s developed rapidly. For example, in 1990 the GDP per capita in Germany was $20,173, in France $22,490 and in the United Kingdom $20,808. At that same time it was $3,312 in Hungary, $2,254 in Bulgaria, and $1,626 in Poland. Twenty-eight years later, in 2018, the GDP in Germany was $48,264, in France $42,878, and in the UK $42,558. In Hungary it has grown to $15,924, in Bulgaria to $9,267 and in Poland to $15,431. That growth is impressive. Nevertheless, the West, or the EU, is most criticized in these countries right now.

Major political and social changes are not possible without a powerful collective vision of the future. That was the case with the democratic revolution in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In the early 1990s in Warsaw, Prague, and Sofia, only one myth shaped this vision: the myth of the West.

The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss defined a myth as a partly unconscious narrative that manifests the thought structures of people in a particular society. The myth of the West that dominated the minds of the Central and Eastern Europeans after the fall of the Iron Curtain functioned similarly.

Lifestyle and Philosophy

When the American liberal writer Paul Berman travelled through the former Eastern bloc in the early 1990s, he noticed an interesting phenomenon. The capitals he visited appeared relatively different, but their inhabitants had one thing in common: a distinct, uncritical passion for everything that came from Western Europe and the United States. The subjects of this passion did not seem to have much in common.

From our biographical perspective, we can confirm that television series such as Miami Vice and the soap opera Dynasty captivated Polish audiences at that time. The viewers were less interested in the plot than in the lifestyle these shows portrayed. They would enthusiastically follow the interiors people in the West lived in, what kind of cars they drove, and what clothes they wore. In Poland in the 1990s, the movie theatres screened only American films for months. At the same time, the sophisticated economic and political ideas imported from the West strongly influenced the local mentality, in particular Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history,” Jürgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action, and Jeffrey Sachs’ doctrine of radical privatization.

Perhaps for an outsider, the myth of the West might seem like a surprising combination of rather unrelated, often contradictory elements, archetypes and opinions, yet from the perspective of Sofia and Prague everything made sense. Like for Levi-Strauss, this myth not only warranted the interpretation of the present, but also promised a better, more prosperous, and even morally better future. For nearly three decades, it functioned as a drive toward modernization, mobilizing people to tighten their belts and work hard for a better tomorrow.

A Return to Historical Patterns

Over time, however, the myth of the West lost its strength. One of the most important reasons for this was intergenerational dynamics. Those who entered the democratic system as adults, and even their children, deeply believed in this myth. But for the third generation of citizens who have grown up in Central and Eastern Europe in the meantime, the promise of a better tomorrow as “catching up with the West” is no longer satisfactory. Since they did not experience the poverty of the 1980s and early 1990s, they no longer consider it relevant. The transformational success of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria is therefore relative. The most important thing for them is not the past but the present, and countries such as Germany and France are no longer unsurpassed role models, but ordinary neighbors.

There were also other reasons for the decline of the myth of the West. In particular, a more direct familiarity with the countries west of the Elbe revealed that our knowledge was riddled with generalization and misunderstandings. For example, after the Poles and the Czechs had just enthusiastically embraced European integration by voting to join the EU, the French and the Dutch went on to rejected the first draft of a European Constitution. The uncritical pro-American attitude of the Poles, in turn, was “rewarded” with the establishment of a secret CIA outpost in the northern part of their country, where prisoners of US President George W. Bush’s “war on terror” were held and most likely tortured. On top of which, there were the financial, the refugee, and the leadership crises in the EU. The West began to be seen as just as ambivalent economically, politically, and—perhaps most importantly—morally as the East.

The fall of the myth of the West not only meant a demise of a powerful modernization drive in Central and Eastern Europe, but also the dissolution of these countries as a relatively cohesive region with a linear historical narrative, moving from communism, a centrally controlled economy and dependence on the Soviet Union to the Western model of liberal democracy, market economy, and structures such as the EU and NATO. From now on, each country follows its own path, marked by deeply rooted historical practices and current political structures.

Thus, Hungary turns to dictatorship, a pattern that the country had already shown in the past. In Poland, the development is less clear, but we can identify a revival of anti-Western resentment as well as tendencies toward anarchy and privatization of the state, which have been present since the 19th century. In contrast, Estonia leans in the directions of the Scandinavian countries.

The Age of Fear

Shortly before the parliamentary elections in Poland in 2015, the migration crisis became the number one topic in public debate. Jarosław Kaczyński, the chairman of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, spoke about “all sorts of parasites and protozoa” that Muslim refugees allegedly brought to Europe. The right-wing media followed, spreading the notion about “hordes of refugees” attacking Polish cities and raping Catholic women. The “dictatorship of Brussels” was omnipresent. Four years later, the Hungarian Fidesz party similarly conducted an anti-EU election against allegedly reluctant EU officials and the American billionaire George Soros who were supposed to be planning to replace current European populations with migrants from Islamic countries.

Of course, the instrumentalization of fear in politics, in particular toward migrants, is a global phenomenon today. And fear has always been an important element in European political discourse. Since the end of World War II, the fear of the horrors of the past has been a fundamental European emotion. For decades, its meaning has been expressed in the German phrase Nie wieder! (“Never again”), which was intended to warn against the repetition of totalitarian crimes of the 20^th century. In Western Europe, this fear of the past led to a cultural policy that viewed all forms of nationalism with suspicion. Instead, institutions were strengthened, and the rule of law, constitutionalism, and separation of powers were cultivated. In 1989, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe followed suit. They brought with them the experience of two totalitarian systems: the fear of the Nazis was complemented by the fear of the Communists.

The memories of World War II reached their peak in the 1990s. Later they gradually began to play a more symbolic and less concrete role. Here, too, the most important reason was—probably again—generational change.

An Advantage for Illiberals

German writer Bernhard Schlink pointed out that in just a few more years, not a single person who directly experienced the horrors of World War II will still be alive. Over the decades, many efforts have been made to preserve these memories in form of recordings, research projects, or large museums such as the House of European History in Brussels and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (POLIN) in Warsaw. And yet, as the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur once warned, the excess of memory leads to shallowness. In Poland, for example, it is in vogue to wear T-shirts with an anchor, the symbol of the Warsaw Uprising. Very few, however, are aware of the senselessness of a combat without weapons that lasted for weeks.

As the fear of the past faded in Europe, it left a large void that could not remain empty. It was quickly imbued with another kind of fear: fear of the future. This fear has many faces, extending from inequality to the disintegration of the EU. Recently, it has been symbolized by the face of a Syrian refugee, which the mass media have frequently associated with the image of an Islamic terrorist.

The forces that are trying to protect Central and Eastern Europe from the spread of illiberal politics are largely helpless in the face of fear. The illiberals were not only the first to recognize its existence, but they also took the full advantage of this fear. Finding an answer to it will be one of the greatest challenges in Central and Eastern Europe.

Back to the Future?

German politicians regularly emphasize how important the relationships with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe are. Angela Merkel never ceases to seek opportunities for dialogue with Viktor Orbán. On the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising this year, Foreign Minister Heiko Mass repeated the declarations of German remorse for the crimes committed in the 20th century. Ursula von der Leyen travelled to Warsaw shortly after her election as President of the European Commission.

And yet Western Europe finds it difficult to see eye to eye on the future of their Central and Eastern European neighbors. Intellectuals from France and other countries maintain for some time now that Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are fundamentally different from the so-called “old EU-countries.” There are not only suggestions of building a “two-speed Europe,” but also of a return to a small EU with just a few original founding states.

The frameworks through which we try to understand contemporary Europe are still based on concepts and mentalities originating in the tragic first half of the 20th century. However, the fundamental acceleration of political and technological transformations affects the countries of Central and Eastern Europe as they affect Germany, France, or Italy. These processes demand careful scrutiny, diagnosis, and a quest for solutions rather than premature judgments. Likewise they require a mutual willingness among neighbors both in Central and Eastern Europe and in Western Europe to get to know each other better.

This will take a lot of effort, but only a truly united Europe will be able to face the current challenges.

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© REUTERS/Radovan Stoklasa

Slovakia may have gotten off to a slow start after the overthrow of communism 30 years ago, but it has since emerged as the star performer of the former Soviet bloc in Central and Eastern Europe. The largely rural country of 5.5 million people is the only Visegrad country in the eurozone and has enjoyed dynamic economic growth in recent years. Nevertheless, like many countries in the region it has been plagued by corruption.

However on March 16, with the surprising victory of an anti-corruption campaigner in the first round of the presidential election, Slovakia showed that it could emerge as a beacon of hope in its immediate neighborhood.

It looks increasingly likely that the March 30 run-off will see the election of 45-year-old lawyer Zuzana Čaputová, nicknamed Slovakia’s Erin Brockovich for her dogged battles against corruption and environmental malfeasance. A political unknown in the country until last year, she is everything that many of her opponents and their peers in other Eastern Europe countries like Hungary and Poland are not: pro-EU, liberal, worldly, principled—and a woman.

In polls, she leads her rival, Maroš Šefčovič, currently the country’s European Commissioner, who is running as an independent but was nominated by the ruling populist-left Smer-Social Democracy party. On March 16, he only managed just 19 percent of the vote compared to Čaputová’s remarkable 41 percent.

A Gust of Fresh Air

Čaputová appears to be exactly the gust of fresh air that Slovakia and much of the region could badly use. The divorced mother of two, who lives with her partner, made her name by opposing a landfill site agreed upon by a big-name oligarch and local politicos near her hometown north of Bratislava, Slovakia’s capital city, for which she won the Goldman Environmental Prize, informally called the Green Nobel. “This small, local case accurately reflects the situation in country,” she said earlier this year, “the battle of the little guy against the political and economic powers that be.”

The grassroots activist Čaputová is a product of Slovak civil society, not the sclerotic political establishment, much of which has been in place since the mid-1990s. Last year, she became vice-chairwoman of one of Slovakia’s newest parties, the left-liberal Progressive Slovakia, which will face its first real test by running in next year’s general election.

Čaputová’s candidacy, with her focus on equal justice for all Slovaks, captured her countrymen’s deep frustration with the graft and clientelism that riddles the country. Slovakia ranks poorly on Transparency International’s corruption register at 57^th in the world, behind Jordan and Rwanda but ahead of Hungary and Croatia. “Corruption was the number one issue by far,” says Gabriel Sipos, director of TI’s Slovakia branch. There has been little serious tackling of corruption, although last year two former construction ministers were jailed for graft.

“Backlash Against Populism”

Milan Nič, a Slovak analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin, says that while the figure of Čaputová is significant, “this is a backlash against the populism and the captured institutions, such as the courts. People are simply disgusted with the corruption and weak institutions. Many consider it a last chance to change things or else they’ll leave for abroad.”

A turning point came last February, when the country was rocked by murder of the 27-year-old investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova. They were shot to death just as Kuciak was closing a story on ties between Slovakian politicians and the Italian mafia. Čaputová was one of tens of thousands of Slovak citizens who poured onto the streets across the country for weeks on end to protest the killing and stand up for media freedom. The demonstrations brought down Slovakia’s decade-long Prime Minster Robert Fico (who still heads Smer), but not the Smer-led government. Four men were eventually charged with the killings, and in mid-March multimillionaire businessman Marian Kocner was charged with ordering the murder.

On the campaign trail, Čaputová has promised to end what she calls the capture of the state “by people pulling strings from behind.” Also, in overwhelmingly Catholic Slovakia she has spoken in support for gay marriage, the right of gay couples to adopt, and women’s access to abortion. Breaking completely new ground for a national political candidate, she also directly addressed the country’s minorities in their own languages, using Hungarian, Romanesque, and Ruthenian on her Facebook page and on election night to thank her voters.

Moreover, Čaputová further burnished her reformist image with “the most transparent campaign in Slovakia ever,” says TI’s Sipos. “Her campaign bank account detailed every item, documenting how much went to Facebook, billboards, or voters‘ meetings.” Moreover, says Sipos, she was the only candidate who published detailed tax records.

Reaching Beyond the Base

Čaputová’s core support has come from urban voters, young people, ethnic Hungarians, and the liberal middle class that has emerged during the country’s post-Soviet economic upturn. Slovakia was resourceful enough to turn its Cold War-era tank and munitions factories into automobile assembly plants. Today, the country is, per capita, the world’s largest manufacturer of cars. Small, down-at-the-heel cities and towns that a decade ago looked passed over by the transition from communism, now boast revitalized downtowns, attractive cafes, and lots of new cars. In contrast to Romania’s migrants, many Slovaks who left the country have since returned.

However, Čaputová’s campaign bent over backwards to reach beyond her young and progressive base. “Hers is a whole new style of politics,” says writer and poet Juliana Sokolova from the old Habsburg town of Košice in eastern Slovakia. “She’s sincere and empathetic, not confrontational. And she doesn’t speak in political jargon,” says Sokolova, explaining why Čaputová’s appeal crosses traditional party and religious lines.

Just how definitively a Čaputová victory in the run-off will mean a fresh start for Slovakia—and break from the regional trend toward nationalism and authoritarianism—is anything but certain. For one, the current president, Andrej Kiska, is pro-European and has already started an anti-corruption campaign. The presidency itself is not particularly powerful office in Slovakia, although it does play a key role in picking justices for the constitutional court, the country’s highest judicial body. Moreover, surveys show that Slovaks are just as opposed to migration as their neighbors. In polls, the new parties, including Progressive Slovakia, still trail those of the establishment. And last week an unsettling 25 percent of Slovaks voted neither for Čaputová nor Šefčovič, but for far-right candidates.

Might the liberal vibes in Slovakia nevertheless spill over the borders to its neighbors? Hungarian social anthropologist Peter Krasztev from the Budapest School of Economics says his country’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán isn’t losing sleep over events in Slovakia. “We’ve tried absolutely everything to gain traction against Orbán and it hasn’t worked,” he says. “But still, Čaputová is a glimmer of hope. Maybe if Hungarians find someone as absolutely perfect as she is, really without a flaw, then perhaps we’d have a chance too.”

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© REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

The widespread assumption that good governance and high quality of democracy lead to better policy outcomes may hold true for many countries, but not for all. The 2018 report of the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) found that “all eastern European countries (…) achieve better political results than their governance quality would suggest.” In other words, despite democratic backsliding and political polarization, even countries like Hungary, Poland, and Romania receive better scores for policy outcomes than might be typical for countries with institutional and governance problems.

And the SGI report notifies another very important fact: Decreasing the quality of democracy does not immediately reduce citizens’ confidence in the government. The report concludes that “fundamental democratic values are not sufficiently anchored in the political consciousness of a considerable part of society.” A high level of trust in governments with poor rule-of-law scores is mainly observed in central and eastern European countries—and Turkey, which will be left aside here. But what are the root causes of this trust? It would be foolish to focus solely on governmental influence on media, state capture of the public sector, or disinformation campaigns—all of them have their impact, but the origins of this phenomenon have to be searched for in different places.

Own Way Is Best

While these countries are as different as their respective paths, there are a few common features. Firstly, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland, and Andrej Babiš in the Czech Republic have all questioned the transformation process of the 1990s. They have characterized the import of economic liberalism and some political attitudes (but not the whole process of democratization) as a failure, one which primarily served the interests of new political and economic elites and therefore must be undone or corrected. Such political messages understandably attracted a significant number of voters who lost out during the economic transformation process. It’s not an accident that two of these national-conservative and right-wing populist parties, Fidesz in Hungary and Law and Justice (PiS) in Poland, have strong support in economically underdeveloped and peripheral areas.

Secondly, some people still feel left behind despite the improvement of general economic performance since 1990.  In particular, the social policies of the 1990s and 2000s were perceived as underdeveloped by the public, and the new governments partly succeeded in filling this gap. For example, a study by the Polish Public opinion research center CBOS shows how the activities of the state toward the family were assessed over time: from mid 1990s until 2013, only around 10 percent of the respondents rated the state’s policy toward families as good or very good. But since the PiS government came to power and introduced a program of subsidies for families with two or more children, the public rating of government’s family policies rocketed. In 2016 and 2017, around 50 percent assessed it as good or very good, 35 percent as sufficient, and only 10 percent as poor. However, in other social policy areas, especially education, PiS hasn’t been as successful. Poles criticized the government’s education reform for overly centralizing control—they perceive the quality of education to be worse than before.

Thirdly, identity politics also plays an important role in maintaining support for the present governments. Political leaders have exploited the so-called refugee crisis in Europe to consolidate of their popularity. The depiction of refugees as a security threat became part of the political mainstream, and politicians like Slovakian Robert Fico, Orbán, or Babiš have spread the message that their firm attitude of “zero tolerance” would stop migration. Moreover, their political narrative also included islamophobia and bashing of the Western European countries for their policies of tolerance and solidarity. It has to be said that politicians and the vast majority of the public are on the same page in this regard.

Confronted with an East-West Divide

These leaders are aware of the great confidence they enjoy among citizens. They are also backed by good economic performance. Though nothing should be taken for granted in politics—the next general elections could change the current political course, at least in some countries like Poland and Slovakia—the growing self-confidence among the present central and eastern European leaders has implications for the EU.

More generous social policies make people feel that they are being seen and recognized. Moreover, assertive foreign policies create a distinction between the new governments and the previous political elites, who generally followed the western European (development) model.

Migration remains a key issue. The division between some central and eastern European countries on one side and EU institutions as well as some western European countries on the other side regarding compulsory relocation of asylum-seekers still resonates. Especially the Visegrád Group countries (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia) see these liberal migration policies as a threat to their identities, for they believe that the “policies of multiculturalism” would ruin central European societies, value systems, and cultures—as has allegedly happened in western Europe.

Enlargement fatigue—the feeling in some member states, including France and Germany, that the major round of accessions in 2004 has weakened the EU—has transformed into the present East-West divide. The East, for its part, is presenting itself as a confident player, with leaders who are not connected with the liberal transformation and meet the expectations of the public to speak up for their interests at EU level. The quarrel started with migration policies, but it is spilling over into a broader cultural conflict.

Central European leaders win additional points for saying that this part of Europe is different (that is to say better) than western Europe, which must be no longer so diligently imitated. This East-West fragmentation (like the North-South divide on austerity) will play a significant role in the run-up to the European elections in May. And after that, it may be difficult to put the European puzzle together again.

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© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Over the past two decades or so, German foreign policy has been driven into two directions: some leading actors were looking West toward America, while others were rather looking East, toward Russia.

The red-green government of 1998 to 2005 provides a good example. In his second term, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of the Social Democrats (SPD) concentrated on his relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin, in an attempt to counterbalance George W. Bush’s America, together with French President Jacques Chirac.

But while Schröder was exploiting his rejection of the Iraq war for electoral gains, his foreign minister, Joschka Fischer of the Greens, who was equally opposed to the Iraq war, continued to articulate fundamentally positive views of America (in a reversal of the anti-American views he had propagated as a left-wing protest leader in his youth).

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who took over from Schröder, is clearly a „Westerner.“ Having grown up in East Germany under Soviet domination, Merkel sees the US-led West as a political and cultural counter-model to what she experienced in her early years.

Her foreign ministers, however, have tended to focus rather on Russia. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Schröder’s former chief of staff, in his two terms (2005 to 2009 and 2013 to 2017) first tried to bring Russia closer to the West under the catchword “modernization partnership” and then, even as major tensions erupted over Ukraine, tirelessly kept arguing for cooperation and coordination with Moscow.

Guido Westerwelle, foreign minister from 2009 to 2013, was equally soft on Moscow, calling for “more respect.” Sigmar Gabriel, who succeeded Steinmeier in 2017, was an outspoken skeptic of the Russia sanctions over Ukraine and a driving force behind the project of a second gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, Nord Stream 2.

Schröder, Steinmeier, and Gabriel all belong to the SPD, which considers Ostpolitik as established by Willy Brandt in the 1970s its foreign policy trademark. Indeed, Ostpolitik still plays an important role in the Germany public discourse, especially in SPD circles. But while Ostpolitik during the Cold War was aimed at bringing political change in the east, and was oriented toward Central Europe no less than toward Russia, today the term has often become a shorthand for good relations with the Kremlin.

Maas’ Surprising Change

Against this backdrop, current foreign minister Heiko Maas—also a Social Democrat—has performed a surprising change of course. Maas himself is, broadly speaking, a “Westerner” like Merkel. He has a strong commitment to liberal, western values and puts special emphasis on international rules and institutions. His „West,“ however, seems sometimes to be more defined by France than by America (Maas comes from the Saar, a region neighboring France).

Shortly after becoming foreign minister in March this year, Maas made it clear that he wouldn’t follow in the footsteps of Steinmeier and Gabriel with regard to Russia. He refused to use the established rhetoric about the need “to build bridges” with Moscow and to “keep channels open,” which was so often paired with criticism of the West’s supposed “saber-rattling” vis-à-vis Russia.

Instead, Maas has set a new tone, noting that “if Russia defines itself more and more in distinction, even in antagonism to the West,” then this changes “the reality of our foreign policy.”

And more recently, Maas has started talking about the need for a “new Ostpolitik,” one that is more focused on Central Europe.

A key point of his new approach is that EU member states must better coordinate their policies toward Moscow: “We need an understanding between all EU members about the foundations of joint action” toward Russia, Maas said. A new Ostpolitik “must take into account the needs of all Europeans—those of the Baltic states and Poland as well as those of the western [European] countries.“

In order to achieve this unity, Germany should act as a bridge-builder, counterbalancing the recent drift between the EU’s East and West triggered by the refugee crisis. Rather than simply criticizing Eastern neighbors for their attitudes, “[Germans] must learn to see Europe more through the eyes of other Europeans,” Maas said. “We Germans in particular should stop taking the moral high ground on migration, especially vis-à-vis our partners from Central and Eastern Europe. Mutual finger wagging and moral arrogance will only deepen divisions.”

A first concrete step in that direction was Maas’ participation in the third summit of the Three Seas Initiative in Bucharest in September 2018, where he also made clear that Germany would like to join this group. The initiative, launched by Poland and Croatia, aims at improving regional cooperation on infrastructure and energy from the Baltic to the Mediterranean via the Black Sea.

In a speech in Bucharest in August, Maas laid out the strategic context of his vision. First, there is the goal, central for Maas, of “a sovereign and strong Europe” at a time when the Franco-German motor is no more “able to drive Europe forward alone.“

Second, there’s the challenge from China. “Europe must also guard itself against divisions from outside. China has clear ambitions with respect to power politics, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe”, Maas said. Therefore, “we need a common European policy in our dealings with China. Only then will China perceive us as a partner on an equal footing.”

Third, there is pressure from Russia. “The same goes for Russia. As Europeans, we must defend the principles of the European peace and security order.” Only “a culture of common, coordinated action in our approach to our eastern neighborhood” can produce good relations with Russia.

A New Sound

This is a new sound coming out of Berlin. Maas is putting to rest a Russia policy that has failed to achieve the desired results. Instead of becoming more liberal, democratic, and peaceful, Russia has turned more autocratic and aggressive toward its neighbors and the West.

At the same time, Maas is signaling that Germany understands the strategic importance of Central and Eastern Europe at a time of renewed great power-competition. This a region where Germany must be deeply engaged on its own, not just through the EU mechanism.

The biggest challenge for Maas will be to turn his ideas and initiatives into political reality. The foreign minister will need substantial support from the chancellery in order to convince Central European partners that the German push is genuine, especially because German credibility has been massively undermined by Berlin’s continued support for the Nord Stream 2 project.

And Germany must find a middle way, balancing a value-based approach toward Hungary and Poland (with regard to their attitudes to liberal democracy) and the need to keep Europe together in a competitive, multipolar geopolitical environment.

Working with Germany’s eastern neighbors on infrastructure and energy through the Three Seas initiative, as Maas has proposed, looks like a good first step.

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© REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader

In late August, French President Emmanuel Macron embarked on a diplomatic tour through Central and Eastern Europe. The timing of the trip was curious, taking place a week before he was to unveil proposals to transform France’s rigid labor market – seen as the first big test of his presidency – and amidst a rapid decline in popularity; only months after his landslide presidential victory, one poll has shown Macron’s approval ratings as low as 36 percent, and several reports have confirmed that the president’s team has been busy figuring out how to correct course.

Macron’s destinations, however, were by no means random. He included Austria, Romania, and Bulgaria in his itinerary, three countries that will hold rotating six-month EU presidencies in 2018 and 2019, which will be crucial for Macron’s ambitious EU reform plans. As part of his well-choreographed program, the French president also met leaders of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which are now constructive members of the so-called Visegrad Group (or V4). The other half of this grouping is the illiberal pair of Poland and Hungary, which Macron criticizes for being at odds with the EU’s democratic values and treating the Union like a “supermarket”.

What made Macron head east at such a sensitive moment? And what have we learned about President Macron’s approach to Central and Eastern Europe?

Improving Access

According to the Agence France-Presse, the whole tour was meant to improve French access to the East. Minister of European Affairs Nathalie Loiseau acknowledged that Paris has ignored Eastern Europe in the past, and cast President Macron’s tour as a signal that this is going to change. “Every European state has its place and its importance in the ongoing discussion on European reform,” she told Euractiv. Indeed, if we recall Macron’s recent meeting with the V4 prime ministers on the margins of his first European Council in June 2017, Macron began his term with two meetings with Central and Eastern European leaders. In an August 26 editorial, the Financial Times pointed out that the two major objectives of Macron’s presidency, the re-invigoration of France’s economy and the relaunching of the EU, are intertwined. In order to secure German support for closer EU integration, Macron must deliver domestic economic reform and win the French people’s support for unpopular changes. He must demonstrate that he is changing the way the EU works. And the market-oriented newest EU member states with low wages and open economies are set to oppose Macron’s initiative to make EU labor rules more restrictive because it would go against the interests of their citizens.

Thus the main short-term goal of his diplomatic tour was preparing the ground for changes in the EU directive on “posted workers.” Macron pledged to protect French laborers against “social dumping” from poorer EU member states in his election campaign, and now needs successful resolution of this issue at the EU October summit.

Playing On Regional Differences

At the beginning of his tour, Macron met with Austrian Primer Minister Kern, an ally on the revision of the EU’s “posted workers” directive. They were subsequently joined by Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, social democrats like Kern, and together revived a new regional format called the Slavkov Three.

The new French president was playing on emerging regional differences in Central Europe. By co-opting the more pragmatic half of the Visegrad group, which has quite effectively opposed Western European countries in some EU initiatives, especially migration, Macron was also shunning the other, more hardline Visegrad countries – Poland and Hungary – which are less inclined to compromise on the directive, not least because the Polish in particular are much more affected than the Czechs and Slovaks. There were 450,000 Polish “posted worker” in 2015, almost a quarter of EU total.

A “posted worker” is an employee sent by their employer to provide a service in another EU member state on a temporary basis. It allows a service provider to win a contract in another country and send its employees there to carry out the contract, while continuing to pay their benefits and taxes in their own country for a period of up to two years. Approved in 1996, this measure has only recently become divisive among EU member states. Overall, posted workers represent less than 1 percent of the total EU workforce; but since the Brexit referendum, in which intra-EU migration became an explosive issue, politicians in countries like France and Austria have been giving it more attention.

The EU Commission has tried to stay ahead of the game as well, and in March 2017 presented proposals under which “posted workers” would be subject to pay and working conditions equal to those of local workers. Macron declared himself not satisfied with these new proposals, however; he wanted to make them even more restrictive and protectionist. In any case, he needed to pick a political fight at the EU level to sell it at home. A final decision should be formally made at the meeting of EU’s labor ministers in October, which then needs approval by the European Council and the European Parliament. “We are very close to an agreement. We see October 2017 as a realistic date,” Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico told a joint news conference after the meeting. Romanian and Bulgarian leaders late added approving noises.

As Natalie Nougayrede, a former editor-in-chief of Le Monde, pointed out in The Guardian, Macron took to battling with Eastern Europe to show he is on the side of French workers, not EU technocrats. But the degree of manipulation wasn’t hard to detect: in a candid moment at a press conference in Salzburg, he almost admitted as much, saying, “France’s problems have nothing to do with posted workers.”

The Sirens of Populism

Essentially, President Macron is being tempted by the very sirens of populism against which he so admirably mobilized large segments of French society in the recent election. He seems to be using this region as a backdrop for his domestic agenda, and to rekindle the “Polish plumber” bogeyman – however, the same trope played a part in French voters’ rejection of an EU constitution project in 2005, and it could now backfire as the EU moves toward deeper cooperation.

Among the Visegrad countries, eurozone member Slovakia is the most willing to move along. Primer Minister Robert Fico has already signaled his support for German-French initiatives beefing up Europe’s common currency.  In contrast, the Czechs, who are not in the euro, will have parliamentary elections in less than two months, which could result in a euroskeptic government in Prague. Before meeting Macron, Czech Prime Minister Sobotka said that he would push the French president to ask French investors to raise the salaries they offered in the Czech Republic to avoid profiting from another kind of “social dumping.” The issue of “posted workers” is thus two-sided, and shows how painfully and slowly the process of convergence between the EU’s East and West has been moving. As Martin Ehl, one of the leading Czech commentators on European issues, has pointed out, pushing too hard to change the “posted workers” directive might help populists and nationalists in Central Europe, and increase the popularity of euroskeptics.

This was illustrated by a bitter exchange of with Poland. Reacting to Warsaw’s refusal to consider the compromises discussed in Salzburg, Macron quipped that that Poland was isolating itself within the EU, and that Polish citizens “deserve better” than a government at odds with the bloc’s democratic values and his plans for EU reform. “In no way will the decision by a country that has decided to isolate itself in the workings of Europe jeopardize the finding of an ambitious compromise [on ‘posted workers’],” he said, adding that Poland was moving in the opposite direction from Europe on numerous issues.

The government in Warsaw rejected the accusations, saying Macron was inexperienced and arrogant. The fight fit Macron’s strategy, casting the Poles as the main opponent of French proposals. This seemed deliberate: attacking Warsaw nowadays costs Macron nothing, as the ultra-conservative PiS government has few friends on the EU level. On the other hand, it illustrates Macron’s short-term approach to his EU partners. In the fall, the French president was supposed to organize a high-level meeting with Germany and Poland in a revived Weimar Triangle format. These plans are now most likely buried, as Macron’s attacks resonated strongly in Poland and will not be easily forgotten.

In fact, Macron’s spat with Poland could end up causing problems for France’s most important European relationship. Any conflict within the EU – even one meant to serve domestic political goals, like Macron’s fight over “posted workers” – means more problems and more work for Germany, which is pursuing a careful balancing act among various positions and groupings within the EU. At the same time, Macron was conspicuously quiet about Viktor Orban’s Hungary. This could be a sign that Budapest is either open to more talks on labor issues or has some other good news for Macron in stall – like a big contract for French military helicopters.

To a certain extent, Macron has fallen back to traditional French behavior in the EU: the European dimension is useful to him if it allows France to align its partners’ positions with its own. However, Macron will need to adopt a more genuine European spirit toward the EU’s Eastern members if he wants to deliver a relaunched EU, one that serves these countries’ long-term interests and does not increase support for nationalist and populists leaders across the region similar to those already in power in Poland and Hungary.

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