INTRODUCTION There was an alternative to the imperialist takeover of Eastern European countries by the European Union but it would have demanded the recognition of and support for the nation states which had just freed themselves from the Soviet Union (and prior to that Hitler’s German Union). The alternative would have meant the offer of free and fair trade (from the 1989 onwards) the establishment of the rule of law and strong property rights, a gradual privatisation programme, joint ventures with Western companies (the latter contributing minority stakes and management expertise) encouragement of Eastern entrepreneurs in the West (so they could gradually acquire hard currency assets) and for Western entrepreneurs in the East. A freely convertible currency would have aided free trade and enhanced democratic sovereignty.
Much depended on a slow and sure learning of the democratic nationhood on which the peace and prosperity of the West had been(!) based. Parliamentary exchange, student and academic exchange should have been priorities. A nationally based, competitive newspaper, radio and TV industry (instead of the monopolistic, largely foreign owned systems which now dominate Eastern Europe) would have done for politics what a proper Office of Fair Trading and Monopoly and Mergers legislation could have done for East European industry and commerce. Privatisation of State assets into local hands – not foreign multi-nationals – would have set the stage for a rejuvenated economy. That is what democratic nation states, seeking to spread the freedom and self governance they enjoyed themselves, would have brought. But by 1989 there were few such countries in Western Europe, there was only an embryo Euro-State seeking workers, land, markets and imperial power. They had a different agenda. Now we see the results:
EUOBSERVER reports from Brussels that new EU member states could lose one in ten of their students as their brightest and best are expected to head west after they join the EU in May 2004. According to a new survey jointly produced by the European Commission and the European Foundation, “there may be a ‘brain drain’ of around two to three percent among graduates and students in the next five years”.
This should come as no surprise since this is precisely what happened ON A GRAND SCALE when East Germany joined West Germany at Helmut Kohl’s artificially high exchange rate between the “Ostmark” and the Deutschmark. Where politicians determine economic affairs it is the people who suffer.
The new members of the EU are overwhelmingly much poorer then the existing members AND they will not enjoy the same financial support or freedom of movement of people or capital. The following are the basic statistics of population and GDP per head of the new members:
COUNTRY, POPULATION, GDP PER HEAD (Euro)
Poland, 38 million, 4,994 Hungary, 10 million, 6,689 Lithuania, 3.5 million, 4,344 Latvia, 2.3 million, 3,800 Estonia, 1.3 million, 4,998 Czech Republic, 10.2 million, 7,200 Slovakia, 5.4 million, 4,671 Slovenia, 2.0 million, 11,783
For comparison the UK has 59 million population and a GDP per head of E27,600. The enlargement of 2004 will increase the EU population by 20% but increase its wealth by only 5%. Given the discrepancy in wealth and the prospects of migrating (unofficially) to the West the new members could suffer badly. Even the good prospects of continuing inward investment by Western European corporations is far from a blessing since, with their capital, expertise and market penetration in the whole of Europe, such corporations will easily outbid and outperform domestic industry in the new members states. In addition the privatisation of former state assets (of which there have been many in the former communist economies) has provided even more opportunity for the “alienation of capital ownership” from potential and existing entrepreneurs in the East.
While individual skilled Poles, Hungarians, Czechs etc are in demand in the West their absence in the East further decimates those economies. The resulting enhanced profitability of western corporations leads to more acquisitions in the East.
Even the unemployed, whom the UK is naively confident of keeping out (not having read the Treaties they have signed!) will migrate. The report says that even two percent of unemployed people have expressed a firm intention to migrate, roughly the same percentage as for students and graduates.
To the 1.1 million people (around 1 percent of the new members’ population) asserted by the Commission have a “firm” intention to migrate must be added a further 3.7 percent of the accession populations who the report says have a “general” intention to migrate, meaning that the maximum possible level of migration could be as high as four million. If Bulgaria and Romania are added (over 10 percent of people from Bulgaria and Romania expressed some intention to migrate) the figure could be five million.
All this shows that the important factor for the European Union is not people or countries or cultures or customs. It is not democratic nationhood for the former members of the Soviet tyranny nor the freedom to govern their own countries. The takeover of those countries’ constitutions, parliamentary procedures and the imposition of EU regulations and laws (without the slightest democratic discussion or genuine parliamentary approval) shows precisely what role these peoples are supposed to play.
They are to be providers of labour, destinations of western capital, assets to be acquired, markets to be expanded and populations to be regulated and controlled – to the benefit of the new Union. The recipe is for alienation of populations, distrust of the new power, a new economic dependence and a new corporatism – more akin (as it is in Western Europe) to the fascist rule of the 1940s – the very rule from which Communism was seen in 1945 as their rescuer!
Plus ca change plus c’est la meme chose!
