In defense of a multispeed Europe

BUDAPEST — In Eastern Europe, opinionmakers are raising the alarm against a recent proposal, supported by France, Germany, Italy and Spain, to create a multispeed European Union. They should instead be cheering the idea on. For the bloc’s most recent members, it’s the best thing that could happen.

Thirteen years after the EU’s first eastward expansion, it has become clear that the economic and political chasms between old and new Europe are enormous, and that they will take decades to be bridged.

According to Eurostat, an average family of four living in one of the first 15 EU countries can count on nearly €5,000 of monthly earnings. The corresponding figure among the newer members is less than €1,400.

The region is also, by and large, at a very different developmental stage when it comes to basic public services and the overall quality of governance. With a few scattered exceptions, Eastern European politicians provide their societies with inadequate health care, poor education and corrupt bureaucracies that stifle investors and entrepreneurs.

It is no wonder that, faced with such underwhelming reality, Eastern Europeans have become particularly susceptible to the rising wave of anti-establishment, right-wing populism. Since the landslide victory of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and the more recent success of Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland, the EU has struggled to prevent those leaders from openly undermining liberal democracy.

Allowing Eastern Europe to drift between under-delivering democracy and semi-authoritarianism while enjoying the full benefits of the bloc’s membership is unacceptable.

Equally acute are the EU’s troubles in fighting the omnipresent corruption in Eastern Europe, especially in Romania and Bulgaria.

These failures are often attributed to the supposedly insufficient powers of the Union over its member countries or the lack of political courage among the Continent’s leaders. But this line of criticism misses a more fundamental problem. The EU institutions, as we know them today, are designed to govern a community of like-minded, established democracies — not to act as a development aid agency for politically confused middle-income countries still traumatized by decades (if not centuries) of poverty and oppression.

Take Article 7 of the EU Treaty, which sets forth a mechanism for dealing with “a serious breach” of the EU’s fundamental values by a member country. The procedure allows for a suspension of certain membership rights, but only if the existence of the breach was determined by a unanimous decision of the European Council.

Crumbling tower blocks in Sofia, Bulgaria | Jan Kruger/Getty Images

The article was clearly drafted on the assumption that a threat to democratic order would be an exceptional occurrence taking place in a single member country that would be roundly and uncontroversially condemned by all the others.

Using this sanction to challenge a regional disenchantment with liberal democracy can never be effective. One “illiberal democrat” can come to another’s defense. Similarly, deploying it against a government that enjoys significant electoral support is problematic in a region with fresh memories of foreign domination.

This presents the EU with a problem. Allowing Eastern Europe to drift between under-delivering democracy and semi-authoritarianism while enjoying the full benefits of the bloc’s membership is unacceptable — for the EU and for Eastern Europeans themselves. In the absence of an incentive for faster economic progress and better political representation, the region will continue to send migrants westward, feeding the backlash against the EU’s fundamental freedoms.

Western European taxpayers will also start to ask why they are sending billions of euros to help countries that view the West and its values with growing contempt. Allowing Eastern European governments to flout democratic principles puts the entire Union at risk, emboldening illiberal movements across the Continent. The disintegration of the EU would be Eastern Europe’s worst nightmare — a return to the dreaded 20th century.

Multispeed Europe provides a solution to this conundrum, offering a middle ground between sanctions and the passive acceptance of democratic backsliding.

To begin with, it will equip the West with a stronger and more sophisticated palette of developmental incentives for new member countries. Instead of a crude “nuclear option” in Article 7, it will, in practice, entail a package of “baseline” benefits for “the outer EU” coupled with clear conditions for joining the more attractive, deeper Union.

People walk on the streets of Giurgiu, Romania | Daniel Mihailescu/AFP via Getty Images

An essential prerequisite of such an outcome would be to tie membership in various “inner EU” initiatives with concrete achievements in democratic and economic governance. That of course would require the politically difficult acknowledgement that democratic principles are, at present, not fully enforced throughout the (“outer”) Union.

A multispeed Europe would be more democratic. If Eastern Europe is no longer able to hold the European project from moving forward, the West will have no reason to push integration down the region’s throat. Deeper membership will have to be not just earned, but also desired.

If, as most commentators predict, the progress of “the inner EU” would make the Union’s benefits diminish for the rest, the process will be sufficiently gradual to allow each society to consciously determine their response.

The mixed success of the single currency zone shows that the EU mainstream does not always have the monopoly on truth.

Indeed, in some cases, opting out of or delaying deeper integration may genuinely be the optimal path for Eastern Europe. With a multispeed EU as the accepted principle, political imperatives will no longer force ill-advised decisions such as accepting Greece into the eurozone.

The mixed success of the single currency zone shows that the EU mainstream does not always have the monopoly on truth. A more open-ended Union, where each can learn from the others’ approaches, would be healthy for all concerned.

Maciej Kisilowski is associate professor of law and public management at Central European University in Budapest.