[Sonia Urbancikova]
The strains of the Ode to Joy echoed out once again last December as the leaders of the twenty-seven EU member states met in Lisbon to sign the new EU Treaty. Its stated aim is to “streamline decision-making in the newly expanded bloc”. But the EU’s federalising tendencies completely ignore the fact that the interests of different member states can vary massively.
Obvious as this notion must seem to every British Eurosceptic, few of them would have expected its most vehement advocates to be the post-Communist countries of Central Europe. In fact, the stereotype of a rebellious Britain holding out alone against the continent is outdated. We should listen to the young Eurosceptic voice coming from the heart of Europe.
In the late 1930s Milan Hodza, Prime Minister of the First Czechoslovak Republic, tried to form a “federation of free countries of Central Europe”. His aim was to enable the small democracies in the heart of Europe to stand up to both Nazi Germany and the USSR. There are some notable parallels between threats to Central Europe’s sovereignty then and today.
The absurd attempts to define so-called “common European values”, while well-intentioned, smack of the utopian practices of famous historical ‘unifiers’ like Napoleon or Hitler. The advocates of the current Brussels centralisation seem to be trying to reduce the status of EU member states to that of quasi-provinces. While Napoleon and Hitler attempted to ‘unite’ the continent by imposing the hegemony of one nation, the current European universalism is to be achieved through ‘compromise’, which places the so-called “common European interest” over the divergent interests of its individual countries. “United in diversity” is the EU motto but the diversity has become too wide to unite.
The distinctive social and economic interests of the countries of Central Europe are the product of forty ruinous years of Communist oppression. So far, the challenges posed by post-Communist development are being successfully met. According to researchers from the Council of Lisbon, the Czech Republic and Slovenia have already reached or even surpassed the living standards of some EU-15 regions.
In order to sustain its impressive economic growth and social stability, the only help Central Europe requires is the help of the ‘invisible hand’ of the market. But the ever-increasing number of Brussels regulations and quotas have been far more of a hindrance than a help. The disadvantages of being in the EU have thus greatly outweighed any possible benefits.
However, there is a way out. In order to preserve its dynamism, mobility and flexibility, Central Europe only needs to turn the focus of its economic interest away from the statist ambitions of Brussels, and direct it towards the free-market Anglo-Saxon world. The core countries of post-Communist Central Europe could form a new, trans-continental commonwealth. This would present a clear alternative to Western European centralisation. Such a formation would be defined by a single ‘common value’: a strong belief in the free-market tradition.
Crucial to the commonwealth’s economic aspirations would be its integration into the structures of the North American Free Trade Agreement, as suggested to Britain by Paul Johnson in his 1995 essay Arguing for Free Trade. The zone could in addition extend to cover the English-speaking countries of Australia and New Zealand, as well as other economically liberal democracies such as Chile and Israel.
An organisation of this kind could even be the precursor to a global free market. This would forestall the protectionist ambitions of regional international trade alliances, which prevent countries from making autonomous decisions about their economic future.
The future of European integration therefore might not be as assured as Brussels believes. The continental countries whose membership is long established have generally maintained their support for deeper EU federalisation. The countries of Central Europe, however, would rather opt for a purely free-market alliance with the Anglo-American world.
Such an alliance would have no geopolitical limitations and could even be open to the current EU-conformist countries, once they decide to turn away from the ‘European Social Model’.
As Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša commented, “if 2007 went down in history as the year of consensus, 2008 should be remembered as the year of new impetus and new energy”. Let us invest this energy wisely, dear Europeans.
