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The situation in central and eastern Europe following the collapse of communism was far from easy. The chaos that ensued served to underscore the many problems that had previously been hidden behind the façade of communism’s Potemkin village. The tragic events that soon followed in former Yugoslavia and parts of the former Soviet Union were the bitter fruits of freedom. So for central and eastern Europe the prospect of eventually being able to join the European Union was of enormous importance. Of course applicant countries would have to embrace certain rules and values – democracy, the rule of law and an open market economy – and looking back it would have been hard, if not impossible, for them to do so without the magnet of EU membership.
The truth is that the EU’s enlargement strategy has yielded impressive results. In the area of democracy, despite all the pessimistic forecasts at the beginning of the transition process, the central and eastern European countries have created mature and effective systems of democratic government. On the economic front, they have also made astonishing progress. One has only to look to Eurostat, whose data compares the newcomer countries’ per capita GDPs calculated in PPP (purchasing power parity) with the EU. Overall growth has been impressive, especially over the last 10 years; Slovenia leads with 89.8% of the European average, the Czech Republic came second with 80.4% and Slovakia and Estonia were third and fourth respectively. The fastest progress was recorded in Estonia, which moved 25.4 percentage points closer to the EU average. The World Bank calculates that GNI (gross national income) per capita in PPP has at least doubled in the transition countries. In 2008, for central and eastern Europe as a whole, GDP per capita in PPP stood at 63.26% of the European average, whereas 20 years ago in 1989 even the most optimistic communist statistics put it at only 40%.
But these growth figures also raise questions about the social costs involved. Economic growth of this sort won’t be sustainable if it is achieved at the cost of massive poverty and skyrocketing inequality, the collapse of health systems, lower levels of education, falling birth rates and high infant mortality. Of course the closing years of the communist era also brought serious problems in all these areas. Poverty and inequality jumped to new heights, while people’s health and levels of social protection fell. Then, after the early first shocks of transition, the situation in all these areas had by the late 1990s begun to improve, and continued to do so for ten years. Poverty – meaning the at-risk-of-poverty rate after social transfers – has during that time fallen throughout central and eastern Europe, although it is still at 19.1% when the European average is 16%. The Czech Republic nevertheless shares with the Netherlands Europe’s lowest poverty rate of 10%, followed by that other radical reformer, Slovakia. And when it comes to income inequalities central and eastern Europe is now below the European average.
Health has also improved in central and eastern Europe. Life expectancy at birth is three years longer in several of the newcomer countries, and has risen by 4.59 years in Romania. Infant mortality also decreased significantly, and is due soon to reach the same levels as in the EU-15 countries.
This rosy picture does not mean that the social situation in the EU’s new member states is without its problems. Many regions of central and eastern Europe still lag well behind the older member states; life expectancy may have improved but it is still lower than in older EU states. On the other hand, fertility which declined rapidly in the transition countries during the 1990s, partly as a result of negative demographic trends begun under communism, is picking up again, and in countries like Estonia, is now among the highest in Europe.
Much less positively, criminality is higher in the new EU member states, and diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS are not only too prevalent but are also linked to heavy of drinking and smoking. and homicide. Despite the many positive developments in central and eastern Europe, these countries are still poor when compared to the European average. The wounds inflicted during almost half a century of communism cannot all be healed in 20 years. And when this fairly obvious truth is not fully understood, a kind of Soviet nostalgia now exists; people sometimes forget the conditions in which they actually lived under communism, and how bad it was. Ironically, feelings of this sort at times accentuated by a new consumerism that ignores the value systems that brought freedom to the captive nations of central and eastern Europe. Pope John Paul II was absolutely right when he warned in his encyclical ‘Centesimus Annus’ against both the left-wing welfare society and ultra liberal consumerism.
To understand the achievements of enlargement, we should compare developments in the newcomer states to those achieved in other parts of the former communist empire, notably those that make up the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In the countries that made up the former Soviet Union, the impact of communist rule has been so strong and the wounds so deep that even now they have not attained the same developmental levels as those of the developed world in 1989. Poverty and inequality remain high and their demographic situations are catastrophic.
In many successor states to the Soviet Union, the fundamental organisation of society has not changed despite reforms like as privatisation. It is misleading to speak of the failure of the reforms as in many of these countries the reforms have not yet begun. Democracy isn’t working and the basic rules of a market-based economy don’t exist. This may suit the Nomenklatura, but it undermines the interests of these countries' populations.
One reason for these negative developments is that with all its rules the European Union did not strike these countries as a reliable option. And the further away from the EU a country is, the greater the problems it has with transition. This partly explains the improving situation in Balkan countries, which are gradually becoming into the EU. The prospect of membership for western Balkan countries has begun to have a positive influence on developments there, moving them towards the rule of law and functioning democracies. This has in turn brought peace and greater stability to the EU’s own borders. This makes it important to keep EU enlargement on track and to further develop European neighbourhood policies. This widens the EU’s own ring of stability, and while enlargement is undoubtedly a costly process, when compared to the possible dire consequences of acting otherwise, it costs next to nothing.
The worth of the 2004 “Big Bang” enlargement can most of all be seen in light of the current economic crisis. Back in the 1930s, the Great Depression led in one way or another to the collapse of democracy not only across central and eastern Europe, but also in large parts of western Europe too. It is clear, that without the EU, central eastern Europe would have collapsed economically just as in the 1930s. The European Union’s rejection of protectionalism, combined with the support given by its structural funds has helped to stabilise the economic situation there. Eurostat’s figures even suggest that overall the new member states are managing the economic crisis better than much of so-called old Europe. Cyprus and Malta fared best in economic growth terms in 2009, followed by Poland, Bulgaria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic – all of which were above average in Europe.
The Europe that has been built up as a result of the “Big Bang” enlargement is more diverse, but diversity has always been among Europe’s chief assets. Nowhere else in the world do so many cultures and languages co-exist, not only without conflicting with each other but also forging greater unity from diversity. This may still be a dream, but it is certainly a dream worth fighting for.
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