WORLD VIEW:'IT HAPPENED here in Ireland." The Lithuanian ambassador recalled the moving ceremony at Áras an Úachtaráin five years ago when 10 new member states joined the European Union during Ireland's 2004 EU presidency. Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia were joined by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007.
Joining the EU completed her country’s independence, said Ambassador Izolda Brickovskiene. “This is why support for membership among Lithuanians remains high despite some disappointed expectations such as not yet joining the euro zone. It is exhilarating to be in the EU club and back on the European map as an independent state. Lithuania can make a beneficial contribution to the EU’s relations with Russia and with the eastern initiative to create a framework between the EU and its northern and eastern neighbours comparable to the EuroMed in the south.”
These themes are echoed in the views of other ambassadors to Ireland from the 12 new member states. They meet regularly as a group to discuss common issues and on this occasion spoke in a round-table format about their various experiences over these five years. That theme of independence came up several times, evoking escape from Soviet control and state communism 20 years ago.
It recalls aspects of Ireland’s own record as an EU member, a setting in which, as historian Tom Garvin writes, “Europe symbolises the end of empire and, therefore, the obsolescence of the ancient English-Irish quarrel.” Such historical parallels and collective memories help explain the attraction between Ireland and these states, despite differences between us, and the differences between the states themselves.
It is echoed in the common experience of majority-minority relations. They, like us, achieved independence from collapsing empires after the first World War. Whereas ethnic, cultural or political minorities numbered about 5 per cent of western European populations from the 1920s onwards the ratio was about 20 per cent in the east.
Ireland’s minority problems North and South are more comparable to the east than the west, whether they concern nationalists/Catholics in Northern Ireland or unionists/Protestants in Ireland as a whole. As a result, we suffered from a similar condescension and facile stereotyping about bad ethnic and good civic nationalism until the new EU framework helped achieve minority rights through the Belfast Agreement and EU accession treaties.
Geographical propinquity and common Soviet control over 50 years does not mean the central and eastern European states are integrated among themselves. Their histories under several different empires meant the characteristic hub-and-spoke systems of rule separated them from one another. Thus they are now getting to know each other in the same way that we are getting to know them too. Their citizens’ freedom to travel and work across borders under the Schengen and EU systems is liberating.
It is an uneven process, in which their differentiation is less visible from the EU’s older core states than perhaps it is from comparatively newer ones like Ireland (1973), Spain (1986) or Sweden and Finland (1995). This is illustrated in the fivefold increase of trade between the new members, from only €15 billion to €77 billion in the period 1999-2007. In comparison, trade between the EU15 and EU27 over the same time went from €177 billion to €500 billion.
Ambassador Tomas Kafka explained how the current Czech EU presidency has brought a new confidence and sense of responsibility to its political class about their ability to manage the EU process, even if they faced political difficulties when their government’s parliamentary majority collapsed. EU accession is a new beginning, signifying the end of the traumatic 20th century for his country.
Others agreed, stressing the opportunities membership has opened. These have to be taken up constructively, of course, since it is a two-way street. The flow of cohesion, structural and agricultural funds into their infrastructures has been a huge plus – even if it is invisible to general populations who do not appreciate where new sewage systems or cleaner water come from. Bulgaria and Romania share this view. Cyprus and Malta are more developed and share problems such as managing migration from Africa.
It is still too soon to make generalisations. That was also Ireland’s experience, since expectations held out in the 1970s were dashed in the 1980s and not realised until the following decade. The Celtic Tiger is often invoked in the new members without reference to this uneven picture. The comparison must now include some other structural similarities with Ireland, including the credit and property bubbles that have hit Latvia and Hungary (but not the Czech Republic or Slovenia).
In these circumstances it is tempting for political leaders to blame their internal faults on the EU rather than accepting responsibility for them. That is a universal pattern, encouraging a new populism across the EU. The political systems in the new members are still in formation, so one must beware of attributing a common “democratic deficit” or Eurosceptical trend to them and to more developed systems elsewhere. Nor do low levels of support for the EU signify a desire to withdraw from it, but rather a new critical realism.
We should remember all this in our referendum debate on the Lisbon Treaty.
pgillespie@irishtimes.com