BOOK REVIEWS

Autumn 2012

by Pawel Swieboda

Has EU accession yielded fairytale endings for the former Soviet bloc countries? This book sets out to analyse the different degrees of success they’ve achieved. And it suggests that post-enlargement the situation is neither black nor white, but unique to each country. It devotes a chapter to each new member state and documents its accession experience, and it emphasises that it makes little sense to speak of the new states as a cohesive block. All ten new members have since joining the EU each developed in ways different to their neighbours. The authors do a solid job of documenting each country’s enlargement experience, while agreeing that overall all have advanced politically and economically, albeit with some serious inadequacies.

The book’s general observation is that although the political anchor of EU membership has been valuable, it hasn’t been enough to prevent a resurgence of nationalism and populism in some countries. And when it comes to economic growth, the EU provided no panacea for distortions, bubbles and vulnerabilites across the region. Some countries have pursued prudent fiscal policies, while others like Romania turned expansionary just when they should have cut public spending. The authors conclude that the EU was not able to successfully provide a one-size-fits-all macroeconomic blueprint for the region.

The character of accession negotiations and take-it-or-leave-it attitudes on the part of the older western European member states form the background against which the book tries to evaluate whether EU policies in fact turned out to be well-suited to central and eastern European newcomers. Its authors suggest that this is still far from clear, pointing as they do to the high levels of inequality that persist in Romania and the “casualisaton and insecurity of work“ in Poland thanks to the “marketisation of welfare“ championed by the EU. In this reviewer’s opinion, the book is flawed by its overly western European analysis of the question, exemplified by the way it lauds Slovenia‘s progress along with its strong welfare state.

What the book lacks is a broader assessment of the impact of enlargement on people. What social and psychological changes has membership of the European Union brought to its newest citizens? And as central Europe seems to have put all its eggs in the EU’s basket, what has been the effect of the eurozone crisis?

Life in Post-Communist Eastern Europe after EU Membership: Happy ever after? by Donnacha Ó Beacháin, Vera Sheridan, Sabina Stan, Routledge, 2012, 238 pp. (ISBN 978-0-415-68084-4)