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Over the past two decades, the project of European integration has been moderately failing forward. Many issues have accompanied this process and their sum calls for a reinvention of European democracy.

Two decades have passed since the European Unions Big Bang enlargement into Central and Eastern Europe. This anniversary prompts a reflection on the EUs evolution and where the European project stands today. The analysis below is based on the three main processes that have shaped the EU since 2004: widening and deepening, the impact of crises, and the emergence of new political divides.

June 22, 2024 - Ferenc Lacz - Hot TopicsIssue 4 2024Magazine

Illustration by Andrzej Zarba

The first process involves examining the East-West divide and the trends towards convergence. Let me first outline some fundamental aspects of East-West relations within the EU. In terms of demographics, the newer member states account for approximately one-fifth of the EUs population. While some eastern EU countries have made notable progress since 2004, their overall economic contribution still falls significantly below their population share. At the same time, these states wield significant political power within the EU due to the nation-state distribution principle on this basis, almost every second vote or seat now belongs to this group of states. Yet, the citizens of the eastern EU states are still underrepresented in European transnational elite circles.

Easternization

Two conclusions can be made based on these basic observations. First, the Big Bang enlargement has created an imbalance in the EU. Second, it has led governments of eastern EU countries to prioritize intergovernmental cooperation over supranational integration. These shifts have prompted the Easternization of the EU, with both positive 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 Russias increasingly radical and violent dictatorship. Perhaps most notably, this has also occurred regarding the debates surrounding democracy and illiberalism.

While EU funds have boosted Eastern European economies, they have not erased disparities within the Union. The EUs enlargement towards the East, driven by economic motives rather than social concerns, has perpetuated core-periphery inequalities. Additionally, the brain drain from Eastern Europe has reinforced conservatism in local societies.

The specific manner of the EUs Easternization can thus help explain why the growing threat of democratic backsliding has often assumed an Eastern European complexion. This threat has been widely linked to the rise 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 Hungarys Fidesz party and the former Law and Justice government in Poland. If Europe continues to Easternize in this manner, it will undoubtedly challenge integration; in such a scenario, EU enlargement would ultimately come at the expense of deeper integration.

Despite recent positive developments in Poland, it is still necessary 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 EUs 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 economic crisis; the declining quality of democracy and respect for the rule of law; the tragedies connected with refugees and migration; the shambles around Brexit; the global pandemic; Russias ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine (the last two had only begun when the Dutch scholar had completed his manuscript); not to mention worsening environmental degradation often required shift responses and have logically prioritized the intergovernmental aspects of EU decision-making. These crises have also presented opportunities for European integration, some of which European elites have managed to capitalize on.

Failing forward

Failing forward in European integration to employ the suggestive phrase by Eric Jones, R. Daniel Kelemen and Sophie Meunier has been no small feat amidst a significantly worsened global environment. The EUs shortcomings have been notable but not catastrophic in comparison. While highlighting the Unions resilience is important, especially to debunk the narratives of the EUs 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 internal trends of socio-economic and increasingly political divergence. The measures the EU has implemented to address the crises, deepen integration and promote democracy have to be assessed as modest, primarily because the internal challenges have been mounting amidst a drastically worsening external environment. In this light, the EU has been failing forward only moderately, all too moderately.

What makes the story of the EUs moderate and relative 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 rule of law and respect for human rights that has developed new forms of multi-layered governance to reach beneficial compromises. In 2024, the European Union can no longer be viewed as a union of liberal democratic states based on the rule of law, as made evident by the concentration of power under the Orbn regime in Hungary. Secondly, the prolonged negative effects of the eurozone crisis on Greece show how the member states failed to develop new forms of multilayered governance to reach beneficial compromises. Thirdly, the unexpected and admittedly also 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 speak volumes about the EUs solidarity and respect for human rights.

It is hardly surprising then that recent years have further politicized European integration, prompting urgent questions about the exercise of political power within the Union and its legitimacy. It is true that a rather stagnant centre, preoccupied with crisis management at the expense of greater strategic foresight, has continued to dominate in EU politics over the past two decades. At the same time, the Union has entered a new phase in which the main political cleavage pits the liberal and conservative defenders of the status quo against their right-wing populist challengers. This division, in turn, marginalizes more ambitious reform agendas whether progressive or otherwise within the Unions complex architecture.

What makes the current situation all the more concerning is that constructive and far-sighted reforms have become less likely just as the sharp decline of the centre-right in key member 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 doubt on future adherence to liberal democratic norms and support for European integration. Moderately conservative, liberal-leaning and predominantly centrist forces, such as Christian democrat parties, played a significant role in shaping mainstream liberal democratic politics in Western Europe after the Second World War. The apparent decline in influence of these centrist right-wing forces at a time when the European political landscape 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 some more general considerations regarding democracy and European integration. As Kiran Klaus Patel has explained in his insightful Project Europe: A History, the new international organizations formed after 1945 which eventually paved the way for the European Union entered a crowded field. Their agendas were influenced by what other international organizations were not already addressing. The mandates of the European Communities, organizations with economic priorities and a legalistic DNA, were rather narrow and technical during those early decades. Norms, values or democracy were not really in their focus. Viewed through such a historically informed lens, European integration proceeded further as the European Communities succeeded in broadening their mandate and assuming responsibilities in unexpected new domains such as democracy an area where any assertion of European competence is likely to be contentious given the EUs perceived democratic deficit.

As Patel shows, it was only in the context of enlargement to the post-authoritarian states of southern 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. When 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 one country whose membership directly questions such assertions today, can the EU live up to the promise it once made, now that it has to confront illiberalism in its very midst? The ongoing illiberal challenge indeed raises pragmatic and theoretical questions. Pragmatically speaking, does the EU have appropriate instruments and sufficient willingness to employ them to defend and promote democracy in its member states? On a more theoretical note, can it truly succeed or are its attempts bound to be self-contradictory and maybe even self-defeating?

These moot questions ought to make us reconsider the fraught relationship between liberal democracy and nationalism that is at the heart of the current political polarization within the union. Nationalists these days are often illiberal or downright anti-democratic, whereas liberal democrats are often rather negatively disposed towards the nation-state, even though it has been the main frame for democratic rule in modern and contemporary Europe, not to mention the construction of welfare states. If the Big Bang enlargement has made the EU less balanced and fostered negative trends of convergence, this recent and ongoing parting of ways between nationalists and liberal democrats for which post-communist Eastern Europe may be qualified as a ground zero has greatly exacerbated the crisis of democracy across Europe.

How to survive

The Ukrainian peoples valiant self-defence against Russias brutal war of aggression can provide an instructive example in this regard and perhaps also a source of inspiration for all of Europe. After all, Ukrainians are currently fighting a war of national independence against their imperial neighbour and are thereby also 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 Ukraines struggle for survival.

The recombination of these two elements is precisely what the European Union and its member states may need the most these days and can most hopefully still achieve without cataclysms. We urgently need nationalists to accept the liberal democratic framework, while liberal democrats ought to simultaneously recognize the democratic potential 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 two 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 blocs cherished self-image, and consider how far nationalists and liberal democrats have parted ways.

Having arrived at this critical juncture two decades after the Big Bang enlargement, even moderate attempts to fail forward are likely to sharpen antagonisms in the near future. More positively put: the European project will need to foster positive forms of convergence (and not only between East and West within the EU), develop a more apt and convincing discourse of self-legitimation, and create a new, stable 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 Lacz is an assistant professor with tenure in European history at Maastricht University. He currently acts as the Istvn Dek Visiting Assistant Professor at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. He is the author or co-editor of thirteen books, including Magyarorszg globlis trtnete (A Global History of Hungary) in two volumes.

East-West divide, EU enlargement, EU integration, European Union

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