The first process involves examining the East-West divide and the trends towards convergence. Let me first outline any fundamental aspects of East-West relations within the EU. In terms of demographics, the “newer” associate states account for about one-fifth of the EU’s population. While any east EU countries have made notable advancement since 2004, their overall economical contribution inactive falls importantly below their population share. At the same time, these states wield crucial political power within the EU due to the nation-state distribution rule – on this basis, almost all second vote or seat now belongs to this group of states. Yet, the citizens of the east EU states are inactive underrepresented in European transnational elite circles.
Easternization
Two conclusions can be made based on these basic observations. First, the large Bang enlargement has created an imbalance in the EU. Second, it has led governments of east EU countries to prioritize intergovernmental cooperation over supranational integration. These shifts have prompted the “Easternization” of the EU, with both affirmative and negative outcomes.
Easternization has affected various aspects of EU affairs in the early 21st century, including allocation of funds, immigration numbers, as well as different attitudes toward Russia’s increasingly extremist and violent dictatorship. possibly most notably, this has besides occurred regarding the debates surrounding democracy and illiberalism.
While EU funds have boosted east European economies, they have not erased disparities within the Union. The EU’s enlargement towards the East, driven by economical motives alternatively than social concerns, has perpetuated core-periphery inequalities. Additionally, the brain drain from east Europe has reinforced conservatism in local societies.
The circumstantial manner of the EU’s Easternization can thus aid explain why the increasing threat of democratic backsliding has frequently assumed an east European complexion. This threat has been widely linked to the emergence of illiberal state-building projects in Hungary and Poland. Many right-wing populists in Western Europe admire the combination of sociocultural conservatism and ethnonational radicalism of Hungary’s Fidesz organization and the erstwhile Law and Justice government in Poland. If Europe continues to Easternize in this manner, it will undoubtedly challenge integration; in specified a scenario, EU enlargement would yet come at the expense of deeper integration.
Despite fresh affirmative developments in Poland, it is inactive essential to address the challenges of illiberalism today. Much of the concern stems from how the European Union has been reshaped and had its reputation tarnished by the series of crises that have unfolded since around 2008. As shown by Luuk van Middelaar in his insider account Alarums & Excursions, in this “post-post-historical phase” the EU’s legalistic-consensual order – what the author calls “the politics of rules” – has been increasingly replaced by “the politics of events”. The cascading crises of these years – the financial and economical crisis; the declining quality of democracy and respect for the regulation of law; the tragedies connected with refugees and migration; the shambles around Brexit; the global pandemic; Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine (the last 2 had only begun erstwhile the Dutch student had completed his manuscript); not to mention worsening environmental degradation – frequently required shift responses and have logically prioritized the intergovernmental aspects of EU decision-making. These crises have besides presented opportunities for European integration, any of which European elites have managed to capitalize on.
Failing forward
“Failing forward in European integration” – to employment the suggestive phrase by Eric Jones, R. Daniel Kelemen and Sophie Meunier – has been no tiny feat amidst a importantly worsened global environment. The EU’s shortcomings have been notable but not catastrophic in comparison. While highlighting the Union’s resilience is important, especially to debunk the narratives of the EU’s decline and imminent collapse, it is equally crucial to probe further into how effectively the EU has functioned as a tool for crisis management.
Despite advancements in integration, the EU has failed to counter the fallout from these repeated crises and has not meaningfully reversed interior trends of socio-economic and increasingly political divergence. The measures the EU has implemented to address the crises, deepen integration and advance democracy should be assessed as modest, primarily due to the fact that the interior challenges have been mounting amidst a drastically worsening external environment. In this light, the EU has been failing forward only moderately, all besides moderately.
What makes the communicative of the EU’s average and comparative successes more dramatic is that the Union can no longer claim to comply with its discourse of legitimation. EU crisis responses have contradicted its cherished self-image of a union of liberal democracies based on the regulation of law and respect for human rights that has developed fresh forms of multi-layered governance to scope beneficial compromises. In 2024, the European Union can no longer be viewed as a union of liberal democratic states based on the regulation of law, as made evident by the concentration of power under the Orbán government in Hungary. Secondly, the prolonged negative effects of the eurozone crisis on Greece show how the associate states failed to make fresh forms of multilayered governance to scope beneficial compromises. Thirdly, the unexpected and admittedly besides poorly conceived Brexit process testifies to the failure of the EU states to pool elements of their sovereignty in a directional process. Lastly, the avoidable mass tragedies along the Schengen borders talk volumes about the EU’s solidarity and respect for human rights.
It is barely amazing then that fresh years have further politicized European integration, prompting urgent questions about the exercise of political power within the Union and its legitimacy. It is actual that a alternatively stagnant centre, preoccupied with crisis management at the expense of greater strategical foresight, has continued to dominate in EU politics over the past 2 decades. At the same time, the Union has entered a fresh phase in which the main political cleavage pits the liberal and conservative defenders of the position quo against their right-wing populist challengers. This division, in turn, marginalizes more ambitious improvement agendas — whether progressive or otherwise — within the Union’s complex architecture.
What makes the current situation all the more concerning is that constructive and far-sighted reforms have become little likely just as the sharp decline of the centre-right in key associate states (not only in the United Kingdom around the time of Brexit or in the notorious case of Hungary but also, and possibly even more consequentially, in countries like France or Italy) casts uncertainty on future adherence to liberal democratic norms and support for European integration. Moderately conservative, liberal-leaning and predominantly centrist forces, specified as Christian politician parties, played a crucial function in shaping mainstream liberal democratic politics in Western Europe after the Second planet War. The apparent decline in influence of these centrist right-wing forces at a time erstwhile the European political scenery is becoming more polarized between liberal and right-wing populist agendas deserves far more attention than it has received thus far.
Living up to the democratic promise?
This leads me to any more general considerations regarding democracy and European integration. As Kiran Klaus Patel has explained in his insightful Project Europe: A History, the fresh global organizations formed after 1945 which yet paved the way for the European Union entered a crowded field. Their agendas were influenced by what another global organizations were not already addressing. The mandates of the European Communities, organizations with economical priorities and a legalistic DNA, were alternatively narrow and method during those early decades. Norms, values or democracy were not truly in their focus. Viewed through specified a historically informed lens, European integration proceeded further as the European Communities succeeded in broadening their mandate and assuming responsibilities in unexpected fresh domains specified as democracy — an area where any assertion of European competence is likely to be contentious given the EU’s perceived “democratic deficit”.
As Patel shows, it was only in the context of enlargement to the post-authoritarian states of confederate Europe that membership in the EC was more explicitly linked to a liberal democratic regime. Predictably, Greece entering the EC possessed exceptional symbolic weight in this regard. erstwhile it comes to the post-communist parts of Europe after 1989, that direct link and claim to expertise were, of course, asserted widely and vocally.
Having made ambitious claims to being an effective supporter and even a guarantor of democracy – a democratic union par excellence – and having at least 1 country whose membership straight questions specified assertions today, can the EU live up to the promise it erstwhile made, now that it has to face illiberalism in its very midst? The ongoing illiberal challenge indeed raises pragmatic and theoretical questions. Pragmatically speaking, does the EU have appropriate instruments and adequate willingness to employment them to defend and advance democracy in its associate states? On a more theoretical note, can it truly win or are its attempts bound to be self-contradictory and possibly even self-defeating?
These moot questions ought to make us reconsider the fraught relation between liberal democracy and nationalism that is at the heart of the current political polarization within the union. Nationalists these days are frequently illiberal or downright anti-democratic, whereas liberal democrats are frequently alternatively negatively disposed towards the nation-state, even though it has been the main frame for democratic regulation in modern and contemporary Europe, not to mention the construction of welfare states. If the large Bang enlargement has made the EU little balanced and fostered negative trends of convergence, this fresh and ongoing parting of ways between nationalists and liberal democrats – for which post-communist east Europe may be qualified as a “ground zero” – has greatly exacerbated the crisis of democracy across Europe.
How to survive
The Ukrainian people’s valiant self-defence against Russia’s brutal war of aggression can supply an instructive example in this respect and possibly besides a origin of inspiration for all of Europe. After all, Ukrainians are presently fighting a war of national independency against their imperial neighbour and are thereby besides defending their significant, if incomplete liberal and democratic achievements against an autocratic aggressor. It is impossible to disentangle the liberal democratic and national elements of Ukraine’s conflict for survival.
The recombination of these 2 elements is precisely what the European Union and its associate states may request the most these days – and can most hopefully inactive accomplish without cataclysms. We urgently request nationalists to accept the liberal democratic framework, while liberal democrats ought to simultaneously admit the democratic possible of the nation-state – without giving up on more ambitious plans of a more united, democratic Europe.
What I have argued above is that the EU has been moderately “failing forward” in the 2 decades since 2004. However, it is concerning how Easternization has gone hand in hand with negative forms of convergence. We ought to realize how much the “poly-crisis” has contradicted the bloc’s cherished self-image, and consider how far nationalists and liberal democrats have parted ways.
Having arrived at this critical juncture 2 decades after the large Bang enlargement, even average attempts to neglect forward are likely to sharpen antagonisms in the close future. More positively put: the European task will request to foster affirmative forms of convergence (and not only between East and West within the EU), make a more apt and convincing discourse of self-legitimation, and make a new, unchangeable balance between national and liberal democratic commitments.
Only if the EU succeeds at those urgent tasks can European democracy have a reasonable chance in our lifetime.
Ferenc Laczó is an assistant prof. with tenure in European past at Maastricht University. He presently acts as the István Deák Visiting Assistant prof. at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. He is the author or co-editor of thirteen books, including Magyarország globális története (A Global past of Hungary) in 2 volumes.
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