By Vít Hloušek
Vít Hloušek is a Professor of European Politics and Vice-Dean for Research and Doctoral Studies, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia
A couple of days after Czechia entered the European Union in May 2004, I went to Vienna for a few days together with my wife and friends. The destination was no coincidence because, for Czechs in general and Southern Moravians like me in particular, Vienna had a profound symbolic meaning during the period of communism and the subsequent transition to democracy. As EU citizens, we visited the Austrian capital, an object of many historical longings and resentments, given the complicated Czech history under the Habsburg Empire. However, at the time of our visit, I perceived Vienna differently. For me, 2004 meant the symbolic end of the Cold War, a merger of ‘old’ and ‘new’ Europe, and completion of the dream we saw already shortly after the Velvet Revolution: the return to Europe.
Professionally, May 2004 was much more than a symbolic turning point for me. Being interested in comparative politics and contemporary history, I used to pay little attention to the connections between national politics and the EU. I quickly grasped that this attitude could no longer be continued, given that my area of expertise was Central and Eastern Europe. My professional orientation has remained much the same since, but I have devoted particular attention to Europeanisation and later also to Euroscepticism and the politicisation of the EU by domestic political actors. Both in my teaching and in my research, I have tried to integrate a focus on domestic politics with its ever more important EU dimension. My interest soon turned from Europeanisation to Euroscepticism and politicisation of the EU in national political debates; from Central and Eastern Europe, my focus shifted a bit to comparisons taking into account Western European examples as well.
When it comes to history and also to current times, I would not want to maintain that Southern, Western, and Central and Eastern European countries of the EU are the same.
Yet, we share a lot of politically salient, socially relevant, and scholarly appealing topics across the landscape of EU member states.
Let us take illiberal politics and political actors as an example. We can find elements of illiberalism while analysing discourses of the Vox party in Spain, Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini, AfD in Germany, or Viktor Orbán in Hungary. This is hardly surprising since, despite all their particular and path-dependent developments, EU member states share with each other numerous issues that would need to be solved and many problems that would need to be mitigated. Polycrisis has loomed all around the Union, although with various intensity and diverse impacts in individual countries.
Central and Eastern Europe can be said to serve as a sort of historical and social science laboratory for testing the impact of political challenges the European Union and European liberal democratic politics face today.
The far shallower historical roots of liberal democracy in Central and Eastern Europe means that many of the pan-European challenges have a more critical, quicker, and potentially even more profound implication for these “newer” member states. As mentioned, illiberal political concepts and illiberal politicians exist in almost all EU member states, but only in Central and Eastern Europe – and not only in Hungary or Poland – has illiberalism translated into governmental discourses, political practices, and even into the political institutions.
In the meantime, the simultaneous inclusion of both Western and Central and Eastern European countries has already demonstrated its charms, assets, and merits. Cross-fertilisation of empirical research in such distant fields as semi-presidentialism and populism among ‘old’ and ‘new’ EU has not only enriched comparative studies but has contributed to more robust concepts and helped refine theories.
Metaphorically speaking, Central and Eastern Europe was a museum of unresolved issues of liberalisation and democratisation before 1989. The consolidation of liberal democratic institutions has often remained shallow since. CEE may therefore serve as a laboratory for understanding trends that are emerging in Western Europe and other democracies.
It is a lab in which the expectations concerning EU integration are higher, the disappointment of citizens with politicians comes quicker, and various populist Eurosceptic voices are louder than in Western Europe.
The abovesaid should not imply historical pessimism. Given the gargantuan and unprecedented tasks and challenges of the triple transition – covering not only democratisation, but a profound transformation to a market economy, and the completion of nation-building processes – one can hardly be surprised by the sometimes shaky and mediocre performance of Central and Eastern European liberal democracies. Although the transformative power of the EU seems to be less efficient than we believed two decades ago, and we struggle with illiberal forces, it is still there, and the Central and Eastern European mainstream in most of the countries in the region has by and large remained on track. Last but not least, the EU membership of these countries has created a plethora of economic, political, cultural, academic and personal ties across the East-West mental divide.
Because of the so-called Eastern enlargement, realised in 2004–13, the European Union has become more colourful but in many ways also stronger. All member states benefit from the larger internal market economically. Politically, Central and Eastern European countries have helped strip their Western and Southern counterparts of geopolitically naïve views concerning the Russian Federation.
Although an East-West divide is still visible when it comes to economic development, in terms of the level of engagement inside the EU, and many other issues too, we cannot observe a long-term East-West cleavage.
Not only has Hungary and Poland come under the auspices of EU institutions but Austria as well before them. There is nothing particularly post-communist in Orbán’s or Kaczyński’s or Babiš’s rhetoric.
Eastern enlargement has not been the cause of the absence of EU treaty revisions in recent years either, although the increasing complexity of interests has exacerbated the problem connected to the lack of a political finalité. The rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands hampered change in the desirable direction of constitutionalisation. Given the jammed framework of the Lisbon Treaty, increased complexity, somewhat paradoxically, has helped EU leaders to think harder about ways to bypass restrictions.
In short, the greater diversity of today’s EU is not the main reason why striving for unity has become more complicated.
The European Union has been facing hard times. The unfolding polycrisis has been connected to a crisis of trust, leadership, and vision. It has been accompanied by greater politicisation of integration-related issues across the EU. The EU model of governance appears to be in need of new impulses that will tackle issues of output and input legitimacy of the EU polity in a well-balanced way.
It is worth noting in this context that the potential of Central and Eastern European countries, politicians and experts, including academicians, continues to be underdeveloped and underutilized.
Being a Central and Eastern European scholar in the field where comparative politics and contemporary history meet, I couldn’t be more eager to facilitate a positive change in this regard through my teaching, research, publications, and public activities. Thanks to the ‘Eastern enlargement’ two decades ago, this is no longer a dream; it has become my everyday reality.
