With the war in Ukraine, the attention of Europe has changed to the east. But before embodying the future of the EU, Central Europe still has weaknesses to be resolved
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Analysis. For many commentators, the origin of the current blurring between France and Germany is to be sought “in the East”. As a result of the 2004 and 2007 enlargements, Brexit and now the promise of membership made to Ukraine, the European Union Geographic Center (EU) has de facto moved to Central Europe. Germany, placed in “the east of the west”, would only take this reality into account. For its part, Paris, with its notorious disinterest and its persistent disdain towards the ex-communists, would have missed the meaning of history.
Those who are wrongly called “Eastern countries” when they are actually at the heart of Europe to embody the future of the old continent? Their desire to climb to this status is in any case undeniable. Just listen to what Viktor Orban regularly says. “Central Europe is the future of Europe,” said the Hungarian nationalist prime minister, explaining that it is “not only a geographic concept, but a political, economic and cultural reality “. In its mind, Hungary and its neighbors are intended to make the west economically, to impose a more intergovernmental EU vision and to defend a culturally white and Christian Europe.
If, since the start of the war in Ukraine, his prorussian message has blurred the credibility of Mr. Orban, the heart of his prediction remains shared in Poland, by far the largest country in the region with its thirty-eight million residents. Together, Budapest and Warsaw dream of weakening the powers of the Commission and the European Parliament and of dismissing any threat of sanction for their authoritarian drifts.
Politically, Germany is far from having aligned itself with this vision. In his speech in Prague on August 29, Chancellor Olaf Scholz explained that he was favorable to the lifting of the unanimity principle and he received icy Orban in his recent visit to Berlin. So much so that Mr. Orban described the SPD on his return as “Party most hostile to Hungary in Europe”.
many dream of Germany
The fact remains that economically, the interests of large German companies have sometimes pushed Berlin to a form of tolerance in the face of regional authoritarian drifts. Thanks to their skilled and inexpensive workforce, the countries of Central Europe have provided a crucial competitiveness shock to German industry, by emigrating by hundreds of thousands to Germany or welcoming subcontracting factories . GDP per head of the Czech Republic already exceeds that of Spain, that of Poland is approaching. The largest battery factory in Europe should soon be built in Hungary by a Chinese company.
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