Foreign Policy In Focus

How did Europe wind up eating horsemeat?

Conn Hallinan began a recent Focal Points post titled The Sunset of the "Celtic Tiger" Led to the Dawn of the "Horsewich":

"As the Great Horsemeat Crisis continues to spread—“gallops” is the verb favored by the European press—across the continent, and countries pile on to blame Romania (France, Holland, Cyprus, etc.), what is becoming increasingly clear is that old-fashioned corporate greed, aided and abetted by politicians eager to gut “costly” regulations and industrial inspection regimes, is behind the scandal."

Another excerpt:

“'It is a shame that testing by the FSA has been reduced,' Dr. Chris Smart told the Guardian. 'I am sure there will be other crises that come along in the next few years.' And given that UK food prices have risen nearly 26 percent that will surely be the case. Inspectors have already uncovered adulterated olive oil and paprika made from roof tiles. … At the heart of this are the continent-wide austerity programs that have driven up the ranks of the poor, requiring low-income families to rely on cheap meat or go without."

To illustrate the crisis -- and Conn's post -- Foreign Policy in Focus and Focal Points contributor Leslie Garvey has created the accompanying infographic.

Along with the divide between rich and poor in Europe, another has opened between the mobile and the stationary.

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989.

The subtitle of Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Sybil, about Britain of the mid-19^th century, refers to the “two nations” of rich and the poor. The gap between these two halves of society was a central preoccupation of social reformers during the Industrial Revolution. Nor has this divide between rich and poor in Europe gone away, despite the efforts of the welfare state. Indeed, in recent years, the divide has only grown wider.

I recently traveled by train from London to Berlin and was struck by a different divide that has opened up in Europe. These “two nations” are the mobile and the stationary. And this divide, like the one that so engaged Disraeli, has had an equally profound impact on the politics of the moment.

Europe has fully entered the era of the mobile. You can commute by train from London to Brussels in two hours, faster than the trip by Amtrak from New York to Washington, DC. For all British Prime Minister David Cameron’s talk of the UK choosing the a la carte option for EU membership, his country is now tethered firmly by its Chunnel umbilicus. Once on the continent, the train system puts Amtrak to shame at every level: speed, reliability, comfort, food (well, the currywurst I ate on the train to Berlin was approximately equal to an Amtrak hotdog). For those in a greater hurry, cheap airline tickets bring people rapidly from Dublin to Athens and Lisbon to Gdansk.

The tribe of the mobile is not restricted to the leisure class. The opening of the borders within the European Union facilitated an extraordinary labor migration as Poles moved westward, the British moved south, Spaniards moved north, and the adventurous sought jobs eastward in Prague and Bucharest and Sofia. The definition of guest workers (gastarbeiter), as well as their overall numbers, has expanded enormously, and bureaucrats now prefer the term “mobile workers.” Nor is it just the young who are on the move. “Retirement migration” has created the European version of snowbirds. And, of course, there are the involuntary migrants, escaping the war in former Yugoslavia or trafficked against their will to brothels.

This mobility within Europe, on top of the waves of immigrants and asylum-seekers coming from outside the continent, has destroyed any vestige of the ethnically homogenous European state. The end of empire, and the flow of people from former colonies to the imperial metropoles, had already made England and the Netherlands and France into multiethnic environments. But now even Scandinavia and Ireland are being remade by the new otherlanders. Europe has now become not just a continent of regions but a continent of neighborhoods: the French quarter of South Kensington in London, the Turkish environment of Kreuzberg in Berlin, the Vietnamese community in Warsaw’s Praga section.

This is the Europe of shifting cosmopolitan identities: the Manhattanization of the continent. Philip Roth’s brilliant novel The Counterlife imagines a movement called Diasporism devoted to the return of Jews not to Israel but to the Europe of Polish shtetls and tony German neighborhoods. This obviously hasn’t happened. Instead, regardless of its religion, this half of Europe has embraced Diasporism, and the era of fixed national identities is over.

Or perhaps not. There is another Europe. After all, not everyone is on the move. The other half of Europe has stayed put. It has remained in the same place, the same village, even the same house for generations. It speaks of centuries of family involvement in municipal affairs or tending the same vineyards or defending the country against invaders. This part of Europe has no intention of pulling up roots and moving to some strange land. The younger generation might peel off and join mobile Europe. But still, someone continues to tend the family hearth.

According to a 2005 study, only 22 percent of Europeans moved outside their region or country – compared to 32 percent of Americans who moved outside the state where they were born. That’s a very big majority of people who stay close to home.

The great debates raging in Europe today are a function of this divide between the mobile and the stationary. Do you support a headscarf ban, an end to the new construction of minarets, stricter controls on immigration, and a go-slow approach to European expansion? Or do you celebrate multicultural education, Gay Pride festivals, more generous benefits for foreign workers, and the greater diversity of restaurants in your neighborhood?

You could simply attribute this divide to liberals versus conservatives. But what makes these debates so heated is not so much the ideological division but the deep cultural division. Half of Europe clings to what it believes are native traditions tied to land, language, and traditional lifestyle. The other half has embraced a completely different Europe that is not defined by national identity or, at least, one national identity. There is hybrid Europe, and then there is the Europe that imagines itself to be a collection of indivisible nation-state billiard balls that can kiss or collide but not merge.

Let me be clear. Some of the people who are in flux are as traditional and conservative as you can get. And some of the people who are staying in one place are paragons of tolerance and open-mindedness. But the members of the first group, however conservative their mores might be, are creating a fundamentally new European reality that transcends their own personal politics.

We might celebrate the Europe of terroir, of culture based in a specific locale. But, increasingly, the people who will be perpetuating this terroir will themselves come from different lands – like Korean-Americans who become involved in Civil War reenactments or Italian-Americans who run gumbo restaurants in New Orleans. This comparison is not chosen at random. Europe is becoming ever more American in its demography. Once the exporter of immigrants, Europe must now refashion itself as an immigrant society.

The European Community was an effort to erase the traumas of the first and second World Wars. The new Europe Union, if it is to survive its current economic challenges, will similarly attempt to erase the traumas of the Cold War and the conflicts that immediately sprang up in its wake. But the EU must also grapple with a more fundamental tension between a traditional past and a multicultural future.

This tension between the mobile and the stationary can be creative and not just contentious. The two Europes could, for instance, consummate an opposites-attract marriage. But before we send out that particular marriage announcement, we’ll have to see the political defeat of the Geert Wilders and Marie Le Pens and Victor Orbans of Europe and the victory of politicians and artists who are more sensitive to the paradoxes of modern European life.

As Washington does with Beijing and Taipei, Serbia practices strategic ambiguity with Kosovo.

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989.

Serbia this week adopted new guidelines for its talks with Kosovo. As usual, the Serbian parliament declared that it would never recognize the independence of the breakaway region. This was not a surprise. But the parliament also called for more autonomy for ethnic Serbians living in Kosovo.

On the face of it, this latter statement seems of a piece with the refusal to recognize Kosovo’s independence. But it is actually quite the opposite, for it implies two things. First, Serbia no longer harbors any hopes of asserting direct control over Kosovo. Second, the guidelines indirectly recognize Pristina’s sovereignty over the entire region of Kosovo. This acknowledgment runs counter to the hitherto popular “partition option” that would turn Kosovo into a kind of Korean peninsula, with a DMZ between the ethnic Albanian majority and the Serbian enclaves in the north.

This is a very delicate balance. The nationalist government currently in place in Belgrade does not want to go down in history for “selling out” Kosovo Serbs. On the other hand, they also don’t want to go down in history for blowing Serbia’s chance to join the European Union. Caught between unhappy bureaucrats in Brussels and unhappy compatriots in northern Kosovo, the Belgrade politicians are relying on a good deal of finesse: negotiating that which must be negotiated while kicking the rest down the road. Call it the Serbian version of “strategic ambiguity,” the same kind of opacity that has allowed Washington to maintain relations with both Beijing and Taipei.

The European Union, too, is involved in a difficult game. Brussels knows that having half the Balkans inside the EU and half outside is not a tenable situation. On the other hand, the EU is struggling with an economic crisis, and there isn’t a great deal of enthusiasm for further expansion after Croatia enters this summer. In fact, according to the head of Serbia’s EU Integration Office, there won’t be any new entrants in the next six to eight years, with the possible exception of Iceland. So, Serbia has to be both realistic about its chances and flexible in its conduct.

But for many in Serbia, the real question about EU integration is not the relationship with Pristina but what kind of state Serbia wants to be. Back in October, I talked with Srdjan Majstorovic, the deputy director of the EU Integration Office, about this issue.

“The European integration process for Serbia is, in a sense, a state-building process,” he explained, “not in the sense of building a Serbian state, which has existed for centuries, but in the sense of creating modern democratic institutions based on the rule of law that can sustain serious political pressure and threat within a democratic institutional setting. For that, we need to continue the EU integration process, because it is the most important transformative power tool in this region, and not only in Serbia. Our primary goal is to strengthen democratic institutions and make them capable of sustaining heavy and difficult political pressures. Only then can we hope for the sustainable resolution of still pending issues and the normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina.”

What’s quite surprising about all this is the level of support in Serbian society for the EU path – despite the length of the accession process, the entrance requirements that the EU has demanded, and the less appealing prospects for EU members given the current financial crisis. Not only has the level of support in Serbian society for EU accession remained at around 50 percent, but the pro-EU faction in the Serbian parliament has now reached 90 percent. And, Majstorovic points out, most Serbians want to pursue internal reforms regardless of EU accession.

The question remains: how much “strategic ambiguity” will Brussels and Kosovo tolerate, and for how long?

The Interview

When you look at the next couple years, how do you evaluate the prospects for Serbia? 

I would put myself in the position of a cautious optimist: 6. That’s cautious enough, since the prospect is not rosy, I’m afraid. I’m not referring to political stability, but rather that Serbia and the rest of the region are facing serious economic and social challenges to which the governments should pay particular attention. Since we are already integrated into broader European, even global, economic processes, everything that happens in the EU has a direct impact on the economies in the region. In such an environment, it’s very difficult for the governments to be persistent in reforming societies, which on the other hand is a necessity. These challenges can spill over into the political sphere and into the perception of the stability of the region as well and produce a downward spiral when it comes to the eagerness of foreign investors to invest in this part of Europe. In such a complex situation, we are facing the risks of increasing political populism.

And that’s something that we must avoid if we want to stay firmly on the European integration path and reform our society. Because the reforms are necessary. The EU itself provides a model that is accepted in the majority of European countries and at the same time provides technical and financial support along with the introduction of those reforms. And that’s why the transformative power of the EU integration process itself, regardless of current crises within the EU, is so important for the stability of Serbia and the region.

Do you remember where you were and what you were thinking when you heard about the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I was a teenager. I sensed that this was something huge, a game-changer, if you will. At that time, former Yugoslavia was starting to feel that something is changing on the European continent. This period when big changes were happening left a considerable trace on my political views: stepping out of the one-party political system and into a pluralist political system based on democratic institutions and the respect for human rights and rule of law. That’s something that made a mark on one’s political ideas for life. It was a cornerstone event for my generation.

For my father’s generation, it was a bit different. He belongs to the post-World War II generation, and he felt that the event was a serious blow to the identity of the generation brought up in the era of a one-party system when the state played a large role in the everyday life of the individual. What followed after the fall of the Berlin Wall was something that his generation was not prepared for.

Unfortunately, the political elite in former Yugoslavia was not prepared for the paradigm change marked by the fall of the Wall. Instead of choosing democratization path and economic transition in the process of wider European integration, we took a dive into nationalist frenzy and an overall disintegration of society marked by wars and ethnic hatred.

There’s a perception that the current Serbian government has adopted a go-slow attitude toward European integration compared to the previous government. Would you agree with that?

I think it’s still early to say whether this is true or not. It’s still not the full 100 days of this government to assess properly what the dynamism of the EU reforms in Serbia will be. What is obvious is that the prime minister himself, as well as the first deputy prime minister and the deputy minister for EU integration, are all firm that the EU integration process is a primary goal of this government. I would stick to that and suggest holding them accountable to produce tangible results. But perhaps it is too early to assess what the dynamism of the process will be.

Mind you, this dynamism is not solely based on internal social, political and economic conditions. There is an external factor as well. Unfortunately, what’s happening inside the EU and its economy is influencing not only European-wide political debate, it’s also spilling over into the internal political debate here in Serbia. There are those saying, “Do you see what is happening inside the EU? Are we going to rush in or are we going to prepare ourselves better?”

Although political and economic issues are playing the most influential part our relations with the EU at this moment, we shouldn’t neglect reforms that are necessary to undertake in the process of EU accession. They need to be implemented no matter the tempo of our EU integration process. The important thing is that the government does not lose its goal, which is the EU integration process. Then, in open dialogue with the EU and the European Commission, we can agree on the tempo of the EU accession process, respecting the objective circumstances on both sides. But this tempo of the EU accession process should not affect in any way the internal reforms, which need to be undertaken if Serbia wants to be recognized as a successful, democratic, and modern European state.

In the media, it was presented as an expectation on the part of this government, or this government and previous government, that the discussion of EU integration and Kosovo would proceed in parallel. But in some sense, the two have collided. EU accession, it seems, has been made contingent on an acknowledgement or recognition of the independence of Kosovo. Is this the case? If so, how to resolve this?

First of all, it’s very difficult to ask Serbia to recognize something that five other EU states don’t recognize, namely Kosovo’s independence. The European integration process for Serbia is, in a sense, a state-building process: not in the sense of building a Serbian state, which has existed for centuries, but in the sense of creating modern democratic institutions based on the rule of law that can sustain serious political pressure and threat within a democratic institutional setting. For that, we need to continue the EU integration process, because it is the most important transformative power tool in this region, and not only in Serbia. Our primary goal is to strengthen democratic institutions and make them capable of sustaining heavy and difficult political pressures. Only then can we hope for the sustainable resolution of still pending issues and the normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina.

The reality in Kosovo is rather complex. Institutions in Kosovo are ruling this administrative area. Serbia still relies on UNSC Resolution 1244 and deems the same area as being UN administrated. The reality is that Serbia does not have the instruments to rule the territory that is, in accordance with its constitution, part of the sovereign territory of the Republic of Serbia. Nor do Kosovo institutions, which declared independence in 2008, have the instruments to rule the northern part of Kosovo populated by Serbs. So, this is a potential jumping off point for negotiations between the two sides, and there is room here for some future compromise. Both sides can agree to disagree and explore possibilities to find some way out of the deadlock, which has grave consequences on the everyday life of people living in this area.

We need a compromise, because otherwise this situation can breed very bad sentiments on both sides and become a destabilizing factor. In this volatile social and economic situation, it can produce very negative effects. There is 45 percent unemployment in Kosovo, 90 percent of which are young people. This is a social time bomb. The situation in Serbia is just a bit better, with 25 percent unemployment and 80 percent being young people. If not offered a peaceful and constructive alternative, these young people could become susceptible to populism and nationalism and other volatile ideas and ideologies.

We are now eagerly waiting to see what the platform will be for the negotiations between the two sides. The president has been saying that he would like to see this platform adopted by the parliament as well and have full democratic legitimacy to negotiate with Pristina. Then obviously the next stage would be some kind of agreement between the two sides, which will be a crucial historic moment for the start of the process of reconciliation.

We’re speaking today at the same time we are commemorating the 100th anniversary of the start of the Balkan wars, when the Balkan nations fought against Turkey. There is a lot of history in this region, as Churchill put it, perhaps too much to absorb. Such an amount of history, combined with economic and social difficulties and a lack of European perspective, can be easily misused as a legitimizing factor for some dangerous political ideas.

It sounds like the compromise would simply be maintaining more-or-less parallel discussions on integration and reconciliation.

It’s time to behave in a European way. It is necessary to engage everyone in the region in the European integration process. And on the parallel track, it is necessary to find some sustainable resolution of the Kosovo issue. But if you put this issue as a condition too early in the process, you’re just risking a prolongation of the EU integration process and the process of reforming these countries. It might provoke certain nationalistic ideas, which rise much faster in a volatile economic and social environment.

Obviously, as we draw closer to the end of EU accession negotiations, this condition will become more present and visible. But at that stage, democratic institutions and processes and actors will become capable of sustaining political pressure. 

In the last week [October 2012], as if this issue weren’t enough to deal with, there was the cancellation of the Pride march here in Belgrade and at least one EU representative saying that this was unacceptable from the standpoint of EU principles. What was your reaction to that?

I was disappointed as a citizen of Serbia. I strongly believe in human rights and liberties. And if a certain right is protected by the constitution of this country, then the state should make it possible for each and every minority to express themselves freely. If we believe in the rule of law, if we believe in freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, the march should have been allowed.

But the government decided that there was a serious security risk for participants and cancelled it. It sent the wrong message, especially to those hooligans, extremists basically, who were threatening the participants of that parade. That’s not the way to fight intolerance and discrimination. Obviously there’s a lot to be done in order to raise awareness among citizens concerning the rights of especially sexual minorities and to improve the overall climate in society regarding the tolerance of those who are different. To be fair, this year’s Pride week was marked by a couple of exhibitions and public events that took place, and these should be considered a small, a very small, but still important contribution to similar events in the future.

Many Bulgarians said to me that the EU brought Bulgaria on board too quickly and missed an opportunity to use accession as leverage to push more reforms through Bulgaria. How do you feel about using EU accession as a tool?

It’s a very useful tool if you implement it properly. I’m glad that you got a realistic picture in Bulgaria. Because Romania and Bulgaria are good examples of how things should not be done. I’m not saying that Serbia would become an EU member state tomorrow. In that sense, we are aware of the lengthiness of the process ahead. But what is important is to start accession talks as soon as possible. Because each and every one of the 35 chapters that we are negotiating basically screens our capability to adopt or not the EU acquis. It provides an objective picture of your own capacities to advance. If done properly, then yes, accession is a perfect tool to improve a country’s position. But still, the accession process is just an opportunity. Success depends on the candidate’s readiness to accept the values and implement the standards of the EU.

Sometimes there’s a lack of understanding that accession is a two-sided process: political and normative. These have to go hand in hand as well and, the process is successful only when both parts are taken seriously and complement one another. There have been a couple of examples of countries acceding to the EU on the merit of a political decision rather than the fulfillment of technical criteria, which proved to have grave, long-term consequences. If a candidate does it properly, yes, EU accession is a very useful tool. But obviously you need to have first of all, political willingness within the country to engage in sometimes very difficult and serious reforms.

Second, there needs to be fully fledged dedication and administrative capacity to negotiate and properly implement all the required technical standards and rules. And then, there should be clear political will, or vision if you wish, on the EU side as well that this process needs to start as early as possible and that this process will lead to the actual accession of candidate countries to the EU. The problem is that the EU today lacks the vision and self-confidence that its appeal still has sufficient transformative power to make aspiring candidates engage in the necessary reforms.

What will be the most difficult chapters for Serbia to undertake?

This is not secret. It will be like the cases of Romania and Bulgaria. There’s judiciary and fundamental rights on the one hand, and issues related to internal affairs on the other: justice, freedom, and security. Those are going to be crucial. The quality of reforms performed in those two areas influences the quality of the overall transformation and success in the EU integration process.

Based on that, the European Commission has begun to use a new methodology in the accession talks, prioritizing these two chapters (23 and 24). This is to avoid the same mistakes that the EU made in previous waves of enlargement. The new methodology implies that, after the screening process, a new series of benchmarks will need to be fulfilled before negotiations on a particular chapter are opened. Depending on the success achieved in these two chapters, the country will move deeper into accession negotiations. If a candidate gets stuck in these fundamental chapters, it will not be able to proceed to the other chapters. This is a new system of checks and balances to assess the readiness of candidate countries regarding the importance and acceptance of the rule of law as a major EU accession condition.

Apart from those two areas, the chapters on agriculture and environment are traditionally very challenging, because these are very large and expensive chapters to negotiate and implement. And the majority of the European acquis is based in these two areas.

Another question that will determine the complexity of our accession process is what the EU will look like in the future. Even more important, what will the EU look like when Serbia is ready to join the EU? Based on the complexity of the current economic and financial situation in the EU, we can say that issues of financial prudence will be very important for the future accession candidates.

Decentralization has been a challenge for Turkey, and some people oppose decentralization there arguing that the country will fall apart if too much autonomy is given to the regions. A debate is also taking place here in Serbia over decentralization, around the issue of Vojvodina. At the same time, centralization is intensifying in Serbia, with so many people moving to Belgrade and some villages in the countryside disappearing. How do you think this debate will play into EU accession?

There is no special request coming from the EU with regard to decentralization. As you know, in the EU this particular topic is left to the competence of the member states with respect to their own tradition when it comes to the territorial division of governance. Thus, there are federal countries, regionalized countries, countries in the process of devolution and traditionally centralized countries. When I was a student, I argued that the Spanish model of autonomous provinces, for example, would have been a good model for addressing secessionist movements in former Yugoslavia, especially in the case of Kosovo back in the 1990s.

According to the constitution of the Republic of Serbia, Vojvodina and Kosovo are two autonomous provinces and as such they do have additional administrative competences. The EU doesn’t have standards on this particular issue. The EU is interested and is following developments in this particular area strictly in terms of respecting the rule of law and respecting the existing competences of the autonomous province. The recent decision of the Constitutional Court on the income of Vojvodina is going to be acknowledged in the forthcoming progress report due to be published shortly, and the two governments (the central and the autonomous province’s) will have to acknowledge that this issue should be addressed and resolved.

The second important issue with regard to decentralization and regionalization in the EU accession process has to do with development aid and policy within the EU. With regard to that, Serbia adopted a law on the statistical regions of Serbia. These are just development regions that basically gave us the opportunity to accumulate statistical data in those regions in order to draw development data and assessments. It is necessary to produce this regional statistical data in order to draw all potential development assistance in different parts of Serbia. The EU structural funds are based on the logic of supporting depopulated areas or areas facing structural problems such as industries moving out or the need for rural development. Obviously the EU integration process will have more impact, of necessity, on improving the capacities of local self-governments (municipalities) and statistical devolution rather than governance devolution.

However, there is a political party in Serbia campaigning on the issue of regionalization. So, these statistical regions could become something more than just statistical gathering areas in the future. But that’s still not a part of the political debate. And if all relevant stakeholders accept this idea the process of decentralization will have to be transparent and based on the widest possible social consensus that respects the numerous regional specificities of Serbia’s multiethnic society.

Every time I ask people here about their impression of the EU, people who are not working on this issue, they turn it around and ask me when I think Serbia will become part of the EU. And I say, “I don’t really know.” I guess there are two scenarios. In the first, accession goes relatively smoothly, with an emphasis on “relative”: the accession talks continue and Serbia enters in ten years or so. The second is the Turkey option. Turkey has been in accession discussions for something like three decades. This is obviously not just a technical question. There’s considerable political opposition in some capitals in Europe. I’m curious what you think in terms of Serbia’s timeline.

I believe Serbia can finish EU accession negotiations in five years, once they start. Perhaps an additional two years will be needed to ratify the Accession Treaty in the EU Member States. But that doesn’t mean that those five/seven years will start from now. It obviously depends on how the Kosovo dialogue ends up. It will depend on the readiness not only of the incumbent government but future governments as well to engage in sometimes very crucial, difficult, and unpleasant reforms: reform of the labor market and the pension system, to name just a few. So, if we draw the parallel between Serbia and Croatia’s EU accession process we can say that Serbia should be able to at least finish the accession negotiations if not join the EU by the end of the next financial perspective period, 2014-2020.

It will also depend on the future of the EU itself. But I don’t have a crystal ball and can’t predict how long it will take for the EU to resolve its internal issues. What is necessary is that there should be a proper political vision with regard to the broader picture of what the EU should look like in the next ten or twenty years. The accession process for the Western Balkans, not only Serbia, should be speeded up, and it should go hand in hand with a deepening of the integration of the EU Member States. That should be a sign of the clear vision, the strength, and the still existing appeal of the EU enlargement policy. Otherwise, it’s going to be even more difficult to cope with transition fatigue in candidate countries and more challenging to motivate political elites to remain dedicated to necessary reforms. 

How robust is Serbian support for EU accession. We often see fluctuations in public opinion around this issue, related to economic issues or Kosovo. How large a core group of people will support EU accession no matter what?

We’ve been conducting public polls ever since 2002. You can check them out on our website. We are conducting them in line with Eurobarometer methodology, and they say that 49 percent of Serbian citizens would vote yes if a referendum on EU accession were to be held tomorrow. But this data fluctuates. In 2003, after the assassination of late Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, support was at its highest peak: 76 percent. If there is conditionality regarding Kosovo, support goes down in that particular period. If candidate status is about to be awarded, support goes up. So one can say that public opinion depends on the major paradigm that best describes the major issue in the current relationship with the EU.

What is important for us, and what shows rather the rational side of the public when it comes to the EU accession process, is that when we ask citizens about reforms that we are introducing and implementing during the course of EU accession, there is huge support (68% of citizens support reforms regardless of the prospect of EU accession). Even with doubts surrounding the prospects for EU membership, citizens tend to be very rational on this issue. They are also rational on the Kosovo issue, because the public believes it should be resolved regardless of EU membership (61%). So this is an additional element of legitimacy for the political stakeholders to continue to engage both in reforms and dialogue with Pristina.

And then there is an additional way of measuring support when you look at the number of political parties that are currently part of the mainstream in the parliament. Some 90 percent of those political parties sitting in the parliament belong to the faction of EU accession supporters.

That’s a change!

That’s a dramatic change. The best way to explore the transformative power of EU accession is to go back to 2008 when we signed the Stabilization and Association Agreement with EU and there was a debate in parliament about whether to ratify the agreement or not. That was the tipping point when the former Radical Party split. That was the game changer when it came to a political consensus on EU integration for Serbia.

So, the political consensus exists. But the social consensus needs to be strengthened. And that can be done only with the proper communication with the citizens, to explain what exactly the EU means today, what accession will bring to the citizens of this country, and how these reforms are necessary if we want to be a well-regulated and modern European society.

Belgrade, October 8, 2012

In 2009, Bulgarian pessimism was worse than that of Iraqis and Afghans.

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989.

Bulgarians are proud to be pessimistic. Many of the people that I recently interviewed in the country spoke with pride of the various polls that bore out this depressing conclusion. So, for instance, in a 2009 Gallup poll, Bulgaria ranked at the very bottom of the world in their view of what life would be like for them five years hence. Incredibly, Bulgarian pessimism outperformed that of Iraqis and Afghans. Given the huge rate of emigration from Bulgaria, it’s also possible that all the optimists simply up and left.

If you look at more recent polls, it would seem that Bulgaria has been robbed of its dubious distinction. A quick Google search reveals that Greece has become the world’s most pessimistic country. But looked at more carefully, the most recent Gallup poll reveals that, thanks to the sovereign debt crisis, Europeans have all become a little bit Bulgarian. The pessimism index shows that Denmark and Poland now rank at the same level as Bulgaria. And even lower down the list are France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Greece. Pessimism is becoming a European disease.

What distinguishes Bulgarian pessimism from the garden-variety strain, however, is that Bulgarians are gloomy regardless of the economic situation in their country. This paradox prompted a group of distinguished researchers to conduct an anthropological investigation back in 2003.

Their report, Optimistic Theory about the Pessimism of the Transition, points out that Bulgarians, even young people, measure their sense of relative wellbeing from 1989, rather than the economic crisis of 1997. Large portions of the population – pensioners, the unemployed, the poorly educated, public sector employees – believe that they have not profited from the transition out of communism. The reinforcement of negative attitudes in the media also contributes to the prevailing pessimism, particularly in creating the impression that “the few” have prospered because of their “connections” while “other people” are not doing well at all – regardless of how the respondent feels about his or her own life. Moreover, this research bears out the conclusion that Bulgarians generally don’t appreciate the virtues of democracy while forgetting the vices of communism.

But perhaps the most compelling source of pessimism is neighbor envy: “An enduring sense of frustration arises from the considerable difference between economic conditions in Bulgaria and the developed countries. As a result, society focuses its attention on the country’s lagging behind ‘the developed countries’ rather than on the relative improvement from earlier, more unfavorable economic periods. Contrasted with those countries, the Bulgarian nation views itself as a systematic loser.”

Maya Mircheva works at the Open Society office in Sofia, helping with exchanges between people living in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. She was still in kindergarten in 1989, yet she has all the pessimism of her elders. She has said goodbye to many of her friends who have left the country. She has watched the emptying out of the countryside. She has witnessed the entrenched corruption and apathy.

“For my generation and the generation that has come after us, I’d say that it’s a lost generation,” she told me in Sofia back in October. “We had the misfortune, if I could put it this way, to grow up in a vacuum. For me, this whole period of transition, well, they say ‘transition,’ but I don’t see the end of it coming. It’s been 20 years. It’s the longest transition in history! I can see that young people are very disillusioned. They lack this spark. They don’t feel that anything depends on them or that they can do anything to change the world.”

As the interview progresses, however, she indulges in a bit of cautious optimism. “Of course, I’m not saying that everything is doom and gloom, even though I might sound like this. I’m Bulgarian after all. There are also some things that give you hope and optimism. It gives me hope, for example, to see these grassroots movements emerging little by little. That people are engaging, though on a limited level, in some form of activism is also a very good sign.” 

The Interview

So, I understand that the level of pessimism in Bulgaria is very high?

It’s among the worst in the world, which is really surprising. This study was done back in the early 2000s, and they looked at your economic circumstances and how happy you are with your life. It turned out that they’re not really that interrelated. Bulgaria has improved its economic conditions compared to the 1990s. But actually people’s satisfaction has gone down, which is an interesting thing to explore. Also, when they asked people, “What do you think about the situation in Bulgaria in general,” people are more optimistic. When they asked people about their own personal situation, it was much worse. It doesn’t make much sense if you think that society as a whole is on the right track but your own life is getting worse!

Okay, time to apply the test to you. If you look at the situation for Bulgaria since 1989 until today, how would you evaluate it on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being most dissatisfied and 10 most satisfied?

4.

And then your own person situation since 1989, when you were six years old?

5.

Then, if you look at the next couple of years, how optimistic are you?

3. I’m a stereotypical Bulgarian!

Let me ask you first about 1989. You were telling me two stories, one about scarves and another about cartoons.

In 1989, I was still in kindergarten. I went to first grade at 6 years old, which was somewhat unusual back then. Children usually go rather late to first grade, at age seven. But since I was somewhat sickly, I didn’t stay very long in kindergarten, so my mother sent me to first grade. In 1989, the children from first to third grade wore blue scarves, and the Pioneers were the ones who wore the red ones. My brother got to wear both because he went to school before 1990. I was really looking forward to this as well when I got to first grade. But it was exactly 1990, and we didn’t get any of these.

Actually, when I was five or six, I was a bit of a poet. I wrote little poems. When I look at them now, there were 2-3 dedicated to that time, including one about my being very excited about this scarf. The other one was my expressing frustration with all the demonstrations going on every day. Apparently I was very much influenced by what I was seeing on TV. There were a lot of people on the streets. In the first days and weeks and months, people were so excited about the changes, so they were demonstrating, not against something, just letting themselves be seen, letting their new views be known. They were going on the streets for these freedom parades. For me apparently, as I said, it was a bit of a nuisance, because it disrupted my normal life up to then. These are my earliest memories.

And you mentioned that these parliamentary discussions interrupted your cartoons.

They canceled the cartoons! I was very disappointed.

Do you remember at what point you came to understand what took place in 1989-1990?

Maybe it was not until I was in seventh grade. It coincided with the period of the end of the 1990s, with the big economic crisis, around 1996-7. This was when I was a little bit older and it started to dawn on me a bit that things were not exactly as they should be. Until then, and actually after then, I really didn’t care much about politics.

When I look back at that time, the things I miss are the things from everyday life, like certain kinds of food that we had back then that we don’t have any more. For example, we had these pastry bars, these confectioners, called sladkarnitsa. They sold this sort of pastry made of dough and lots of sugary syrup called tolumbichki. You couldn’t get Coke, but you could get boza. You know boza? It’s a very typical drink. It’s still very popular. I don’t really like it that much now, because I’m not used to drinking it any more. But I liked it back then. It’s made from some fermented grain. It’s sweet and thick. Things like this were the peak of people’s gourmandise at the time. Now you have Burger King and McDonalds.

Another thing I miss from that time is the way my grandmother’s village once was. My grandmother lives in a small village that since the 1990s has really deteriorated in terms of all the businesses that have closed down. There was a local cinema, a library, and now everything is closed down. In the village, it’s 89 percent old people, more than 90 percent Turkish. All the young people, like my mother, migrated to the cities. When I was younger, when I went to my grandmother’s village, I could go to the library and borrow some books. I can no longer do any of that when I go there now. It’s just a dead place. That’s one of the bad things about the transition for me. For some reason, everything that’s outside the capital, the provinces, has been very negatively affected.

When you were in high school, as you were getting ready to go to university, what was the average conversation you had with your friends about life in Bulgaria? You said that the whole country was pretty pessimistic. Were you enthusiastic about going to school? Or were people just making plans to go abroad?

In the case of my high school, everyone was making plans to go abroad. I went to a high school with a very intensive teaching of foreign languages. I went to a German-speaking high school where we learned German very intensively and also languages like English. While in high school, we had this option to undergo an even more intensive training at the end of which we could receive a language certificate that gave you the right to study in Germany without passing an aptitude test. Even I passed this. Most of my class did this, and two-thirds went to study in Germany, and very few came back.

I was one of the few who decided not to go, mostly for personal reasons because I didn’t feel ready. For me at the time it was a big step. I’d only been abroad just once. That generation of young people had been all over Europe. But for me, the first time I went abroad was in 2000, when I was in the eighth grade. We went to Austria. Bulgaria wasn’t an EU member back then, so we had to apply for a visa. It was a totally different experience for me, this first time abroad. Maybe that’s why, when I graduated, and I had to decide whether to go abroad and study that I decided to stay here.

We Bulgarians, and this is something very different from America, have very strong family ties, especially parents with their children. Even today, my mother feels that she has to take care of me even though I’m almost 30! But this is normal in our social circumstances. So, I didn’t go abroad because I thought I wasn’t ready and I would be homesick and miss my family.

But most of my friends went abroad. In the conversations we had during high school, they talked about their intention to go abroad. It wasn’t something they decided to do on a whim. Even back then, the situation was like that. 

When they talked about going abroad, did they intend to stay or eventually come back?

I mean, who goes abroad with the intention of coming back? Very few of my friends came back. The people who came back were the ones who failed, who didn’t finish their studies. In Germany the tuition fees are very low, but still they have to work to support themselves. The studies are very hard, not like here in Bulgaria, so you have to study hard. And it’s difficult to work and study at the same time. So most ended up dropping out of school and just working. In the end, either they lost their jobs or decided to come back. Most graduated and stayed there. Some got really nice jobs. Of course, I wouldn’t blame them if they don’t come back. That’s how it is.

Do you regret staying here? 

I can’t say that I’m here forever. Who knows, maybe I too will go abroad if the opportunity arises. I didn’t do my BA abroad, but I did two masters overseas, plus an exchange year abroad, so I did get around quite a bit. I already see myself as not tied to this country.

There are some Bulgarians who are, well, maybe not patriotic, but they claim to miss Bulgaria when they are abroad. They emigrate, but all the time they are abroad they miss Bulgaria. They don’t come back because they know they’re better off over there.

I’m not one of these. It’s true that I’ve not been abroad for more than a year at a time, but I never actually felt homesick. And I always managed to integrate really well. I actually enjoy being in a multicultural environment, something that I miss here in Bulgaria because we’re such a homogenous society. I don’t get to communicate much with foreigners in my daily life, which is something that I really enjoyed when I was a student. So I don’t think it would be a problem for me. I don’t feel like I missed out on it completely. Someday, I will go somewhere, though I don’t know whether it will be permanent or not.

Where did you do your master’s degrees?

I did one in the Netherlands in Maastricht, a small city near the border with Belgium and Germany. The second one I did in Belgium, in Bruges.

You’re working at Open Society, and you do a lot of work with the East-East project.

That’s my major job at the moment.

The program encourages exchanges within the region but also Bulgaria and other parts of the world.

Not the whole world. Basically only southeast Europe and Central Asia. It has certain ambitions to go global. But the global work of East-East is still very much in a pilot stage. There was some research linking continents, like South America and Europe. But I don’t think any organizations from Bulgaria participated in that.

Does that satisfy at least a little your desire to be in touch with other countries?

That’s one part of my job that I really enjoy doing. And I’m grateful for this opportunity. I have a background in European studies. I studied a lot about Europe, the EU. But I didn’t really know very much about the neighboring regions, the Caucasus, Central Asia. Or even other Eastern European countries, because European Studies is still very much focused on the West. You look to the West and the core of the EU like some kind of example. Even though you’re in the region here, you’re oblivious to the other countries around you. That’s a shame.

I felt very much ashamed when I began working here. I realized that I didn’t really know much about the region. I felt very happy to participate in these annual meetings of coordinators in the East-East network, where we convene each year in a different city in the network. We don’t see each other much in person. We just communicate by email. During these meetings, I don’t just have a chance to meet these people but we have conversations and exchange ideas about situations in our countries. For me, this is what I enjoy most about this work. It really broadens your horizons.

What’s your attitude about Bulgaria’s entrance into the EU? It was such a dream for many people in this country for so long. But how do you feel, having your entire life framed by the desire to be part of Europe and then ultimately becoming part of Europe? And then of course your studies…

Although we are part of the EU, it doesn’t mean that we feel ourselves part of the EU. Or that we have the ability to really subscribe to EU values. Here’s an example that’s very funny. Maybe you haven’t used any public transport here?

I’ve taken the tram.

Then you know what I’m talking about. On many trams there is a sticker on the window with a Bulgarian flag and an EU flag and a caption that basically urges people not to litter. It says, “Please be Europeans. Don’t litter and don’t destroy the vehicle.” This really tells you something about Europe and us not being part of Europe. Europeans are civilized, the ones who behave. And we are still barbarians. This is how Bulgarians think of Europe.

I don’t really think we’ve internalized being EU members. Europe is not seen as a package of rules and obligations that you have to adhere to. It’s just a donor and you have to figure out ways to get money from Europe one way or another.

You know about this cooperation and verification mechanism, the monitoring of our judicial system. This is an example of once we’re in the EU, the EU loses its teeth, loses its ability to influence internal reforms. During the process of applying to EU, the conditionality was much stronger — if you don’t comply, you’re not in. But once you’re in, they don’t have as much influence. It’s not just a problem with Bulgaria but with all other EU member states. Look at the situation in Spain and Italy, and I’m not just talking about the financial crisis. I heard on the news yesterday that because Bulgaria has failed to comply with regulations concerning the use of renewable energy — not surprisingly — we are threatened by the European commission with an infringement procedure. It’s not just Bulgaria. Almost all EU countries have been subject to the same infringement procedure.

Once you’re in the EU, when you’re part of the club, suddenly you no longer feel under pressure to comply like you did when you were trying to get in. It’s a matter of developing your own political and administrative culture and developing the political responsibility to become a well-governed country. The EU or some other organization can’t force you to do this if you’re not willing to do it yourself.

That’s an interesting tension between the need for a country to do it on its own and an external set of pressures. Right now, I guess that Bulgaria is in the middle of that.

Do you feel as if there is a missing generation here in Bulgaria? So many people of your age have left Bulgaria. Do you feel that as a palpable lack? When you get together with people of your own age, is there any sense of pride about being here in Bulgaria instead of somewhere else. 

I definitely feel that there is a big lack, that all these people are no longer here. This is one of my major concerns. This brain drain is one of our biggest problems. People of all sorts emigrate, of course, but especially the most educated ones are mostly likely not to come back. I’ve read that there’s a trend of more and more people coming back, especially people from the first emigration wave of the early 1990s when the borders opened. Opportunities for doing business here are relatively better now than before.

But for my generation and the generation that has come after us, I’d say that it’s a lost generation. We had the misfortune, if I could put it this way, to grow up in a vacuum. For me, this whole period of transition, well, they say “transition,” but I don’t see the end of it coming. It’s been 20 years. It’s the longest transition in history! I can see that young people are very disillusioned. They lack this spark. They don’t feel that anything depends on them or that they can do anything to change the world. There are very few idealists who have the potential to become leaders and do something. Most young people have this passive attitude toward life. They live life from day to day. They believe that there is no future for them, without realizing that they are the ones who make their own future.

Of course you cannot just generalize. There are also many people who stay here on a matter of principle and may feel proud of this. But I don’t think that the majority of young people feel very optimistic about the future here. Maybe it’s because, as I said, at the time when they grew up there was also this value shift that came with the changes. The old values are no longer there. But also the new values are still very unsettled. The beginning of the 1990s was a time for these shady millionaires. For a long time, even today, many young people believe that the reason for living is to get rich very quickly. This is all they care about.

I don’t know if you’re aware of this phenomenon of chalga. If you want to study Bulgaria, this is something you need to look into. I call it a social cultural phenomenon. It’s a kind of music. But it’s more than just music for me. This music became very popular during those years. On the face of it, it’s pop music. It’s a mixture of Balkan styles: Serbian and Greek melodies with a pop feeling. I find this music horrible and tasteless. That’s just my personal opinion and the opinion of many other people, with taste. But there are a lot of people who love this music.

They don’t just love the tunes. They subscribe to the whole culture, the whole concept that this music is transmitting. When you look at the videos of these songs — the style of the singers, the lyrics — then it gets pretty obvious. Because they sing about money, about sex. It’s kind of subtle. Actually it’s not so subtle! It’s a social phenomenon as well. A lot of young people listen to it. They don’t just listen to it. They behave like it. Girls like to dress like these singers. They’re role models.

The dress is folk style dresses?

No, how to put it, they dress in a sexually provocative way.

It has some relationship to Serbian turbo folk?

Yes, it’s very similar. It’s a phenomenon of these years. It was unheard of before, of course. It’s interesting to ask why it suddenly became so popular.

When you talk to people who are basically my age and older, 50 and above, do you ever feel like they just don’t understand, based on their own experience, and you just want to shake them and say, “Look, Bulgaria is not the same any more!” Do you ever get that frustrated feeling?

The generation gap is a big issue. Also, in our case. some people still say that Bulgaria will never get out of its transition until the generation who lived at that time dies out. It’s partly true. There’s still a nomenklatura who is part of both politics and business. These people still follow the old ways. And all the problems that we’ve had with corruption — really, the whole mentality that is not European or modern — many of these people have lived this for so many years, they’re not going to change, even after 20 years. If they lived in the old system for most of their lives, and they managed to achieve a certain position under the old regime, they’re going to continue to live this way and work this way. I don’t know what can be done to change this.

Working in an institution like this, I still have some faith that things are changing, even though very slowly. It’s just a matter of constant work in making society understand that things can be done differently. On the personal level, on an individual level, it’s a very tough thing to do. I don’t know if it’s at all possible to do.

Is there anything you’ve seen recently that makes you optimistic? It could be small. Near my hotel, for instance, I saw bike paths. I’ve never seen those before here in Sofia. And also the metro…

Ah, the metro is amazing. It’s brand-new. That’s why it looks so nice.

I was impressed with the displays of the stuff that was found in the archaeological digs.

Yes, in Serdica station. I was also impressed.

Of course, I’m not saying that everything is doom and gloom, even though I might sound like this. I’m Bulgarian after all. There are also some things that give you hope and optimism. It gives me hope, for example, to see these grassroots movements emerging little by little. That people are engaging, though on a limited level, in some form of activism is also a very good sign.

Also, some people do return from abroad. There’s this organization that I admire: the Teach for All network. They have an organization here in Bulgaria. The director, the founder of it here, is a very young woman, in her early thirties, a Harvard graduate who worked at McKinsey, but who still decided to come back and work on this very idealistic goal of making schools better. And they do have some amazing results, as far as I know.

So, people like this exist. I really hope that after a few years they’re still in Bulgaria!

The European Union has turned out to be not that different from the American neoliberal economic model.

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989.

HANKYOREH -- Back in 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the countries of East-Central Europe all had a common vision. They wanted to join the Europe Community. Some wanted to join immediately; others wanted to join eventually. After half a century yoked to the Soviet Union, the people of this region saw membership in the common European home as a guarantee of democratic governance, economic prosperity, and social stability.

Twenty years later, membership in the European Union comes with no guarantees. The economic crisis that convulses the continent shows no signs of abating. The region of East-Central Europe struggles with corruption and a new brand of authoritarianism. And extremist intolerance continues to plague Europe east and west.

It‘s not just the European economy that is in crisis. The very idea of Europe has lost its shine. “Europe” once meant a more egalitarian and more tolerant model than the free market orthodoxy reigning in the United States. In this age of globalization, however, Europe has become more and more like everywhere else.

This leaves the countries of East-Central Europe in a difficult position. They are finally joining an exclusive club. But the perks of membership are no longer quite so exciting. It’s not surprising that Euroskepticism has crept into the hearts of eastern Europeans. After all, even the inhabitants of the original core group of member countries are having second thoughts.

Of course, Europe still means something. On the positive side, new members of the European Union have access to funds to modernize their infrastructure. I recently drove back and forth across Bulgaria, and next to construction sites I saw many signs with the European Union logo. Repairing the major east-west highways in Bulgaria is not just important for tourists eager to race from Sofia to the Black Sea coast. Good roads – and good rail lines – are essential for getting Bulgarian goods to markets and also to take advantage of Bulgaria‘s geographic location for transshipment.

Also, on the positive side, membership in the European Union has served as a means of leverage to bring the political standards of candidate countries up to European levels. Whether it’s securing the rights of minorities (ethnic, religious, sexual) or ensuring a properly functioning judiciary, the European Union requires potential members to meet a long list of criteria. Since powerful domestic lobbies oppose many of these requirements, reformers can use this external pressure – the European form of gaiatsu* — to push through changes that might otherwise take decades or might not happen at all.

There are certainly other benefits to EU membership, from visa-free travel to lower barriers to trade. But there are now some considerable downsides as well.

The most important challenge that faces EU members and potential candidates is the austerity package that virtually all governments are expected to implement. It was once the case that new members saw a tremendous expansion of their social welfare systems to meet European standards. They also had access to much more generous adjustment funds so that they could close the gap between themselves and the richer members of the community. In this way, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland rather quickly became equal partners in the grand European economic experiment.

Today, new members like Slovenia have to find ways to cut government spending to meet the EU‘s fiscal demands. Candidate countries like Croatia have to do the same. They are not alone, of course. The governments in Greece and Spain and Italy are all expected to push through unpopular austerity packages.

The European Union, in other words, has turned out to be not that different from the American neoliberal economic model after all. Eastern Europe is in fact facing a second round of government downsizing after the initial dismantlement of communism in the early 1990s.

Twenty years ago, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, countries embarked on a new era of democratic governance. Membership in the EU was to make this process irreversible.

It turns out, however, that the process is not entirely irreversible. In Hungary, the right-wing party FIDESZ has cracked down on the media, centralized authority, and focused on the rights of ethnic Hungarians to the exclusion of all others. European authorities have lodged their protests. But Hungary remains an EU member in good standing. Other political parties in the region with similar political programs are watching Hungary’s experience very carefully.

And then there‘s the resurgence of intolerance throughout Europe. Racist and Islamophobic political parties have gained ground in virtually every country, including areas once known for their tolerance such as the Netherlands and Sweden. In East-Central Europe, anti-Roma sentiment remains high despite more than two decades of concerted effort by NGOs to integrate this often marginalized population. This month, the Serbian government again cancelled a planned Gay Pride march. Domestic groups pointed out that the cancellation was unconstitutional; EU authorities warned that Serbia would have to meet European standards for human rights to have any chance of future membership.

The current trends are not inescapable. Europe could weather the current economic crisis and return to its emphasis on the social component of their social-market economies. A new wave of civic activism could drastically reduce the support for authoritarian parties. And an invigorated civil rights movement by and for minorities, supported by strongly enforced European regulations, could push racists and Islamophobes to the fringes where they belong.

Much depends on the Europe’s newest members and countries like Croatia that are on the verge of accession. Beginning in 1989, the people of these countries unshackled themselves from tyranny. They are now realizing their earlier dream of becoming part of the European Union. But this is not the final step. They can help make the European idea mean something other than austerity and intolerance. They can make “Europe” once again translate into justice, equality, and prosperity.

*gaiatsu n. Foreign pressure; pressure applied by one country onto another.