Eight former communist countries in Eastern Europe will make history Saturday when they formally join the European Union. But they will enter the group as second-class members, scarred by internal political struggles, poverty and divisions between citizens who embrace the West and those who fear they are already losing ground to it.
Fifteen years after the Berlin Wall fell, the eight -- who will join with Cyprus and Malta -- have traded the straitjackets of planned economies and one-party rule for the risky pleasures of democracy and capitalism. With some people prospering and others mired in unemployment, many are deeply skeptical about this next step in modernization. In a recent poll in the Czech Republic, for example, less than 10 percent of those surveyed said they expected their standard of living to improve after joining the union.
"I am a little afraid of the European Union," said Alicja Goraj, who recently had to close her clothing shop in Szczecin in northwest Poland because of a drop in sales. "The offers and the prospects we were promised have turned out to be completely different than what was presented. The closer we come to joining the EU, the more obstacles we've faced."
As full members starting May 1, the eight countries will enjoy reduced restrictions on their citizens' short-term travel into the current 15 states. Most goods will pass to and from fellow member states without customs duties. The newcomers' national budgets will get a net addition of $30 billion in EU subsidies. And after years of observer status, their representatives in Brussels will cast formal votes in EU decisions.
Free market realities
They will also have to contend with often painful and disruptive competition with the union's current 15 members and with each other.
Slovakia, one of the poorest of the new members, recently beat out Poland and the Czech Republic for a contract with the South Korean conglomerate Hyundai for an $870 million factory that will manufacture Kia cars for sale across the expanded union. The promised 2,400 jobs at the plant are desperately needed in the three bidding countries.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration have depicted the eight countries as similar, part of a dynamic "New Europe" of free markets and democracy that is committed to fighting terrorism. But the eight have widely differing histories, national identities and standards of living.
Poland, by far the largest, struggles with high unemployment, populist disaffection and a love affair with the United States that feels increasingly one-sided. In Hungary, smaller, better educated and with lower unemployment, a new generation of politicians sees EU membership in hardheaded, unromantic terms of net gains and losses.
Leaders among the new members are determined to wrest their countries' rightful share of EU wealth from the bureaucrats at headquarters in Brussels.
The eight do line up together in viewing the United States, not the EU, as the prime guarantor of their security, especially against any rebirth of imperial ambitions in nearby Russia. Their earlier induction into the U.S.-dominated NATO alliance was for them as important a rite of passage. Breaking ranks with EU cornerstone states France and Germany, most have dispatched peacekeeping forces to Iraq, not out of strategic ambitions but simply because Washington asked them to.
For many, the real divisions are not between pro-Americans and pro-Europeans, but between haves and have-nots.
"Those who support the EU also support America, NATO, openness and everything pro-Western," says Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, director of the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw. For those who feel left behind, "the picture is much darker. People fear the unknown, and fears are prevailing over hopes right now."
Internal struggles
Interviews with politicians, analysts and ordinary citizens suggest that most of the countries are more concerned with internal political struggles than their place in the world. Since 1993, Lithuania has had 11 governments, Latvia 10 and Poland six. Four of the current administrations in the eight East European states joining the union are at or near collapse. Many face corruption charges of the kind that recently triggered the impeachment of Lithuanian President Rolandas Paksas.
The EU's supporters say membership will bring greater stability, less corruption and tougher environmental controls. The EU enforces quality standards for everything from baking a croissant to building an oil refinery. Still, most of the new members agree that having survived the Soviet empire, they don't want rule from Brussels.
The European Union is a huge common market in which member countries remove trade and travel barriers and pool key elements of sovereignty in joint bodies in Brussels. In recent years, it has begun to formulate joint foreign and military policy.
As for the union itself, the new members will mean a leap from a grouping of 15 generally affluent and well-ordered countries to a disparate collection of 25 states with a total population of 455 million.
EU officials dealt with each of the newcomers separately in negotiations and played them off against each other. Some of the nations' hopes have gone unfulfilled -- Eastern Europe's farmers will get EU subsidies at 24 percent of the level provided to their wealthier counterparts in France and Germany. Workers from the eight countries will be denied the unrestricted right to take permanent jobs in the 15 existing members for up to seven years.
Use of the euro, the common currency of 12 EU countries, will be put off for at least several years while the new entrants make adjustments in their economies and national budgets.
Still, for many in the new countries, EU membership marks a return of hope. "Maybe the world will look at us like normal people," said Beata Cialkyte, 33, a sales manager, as she watched a bus bearing the slogan "Let's Be European" chug through the colorful Old Town section of Vilnius, Lithuania's capital.
By contrast, in Warsaw two weeks ago there was an old-fashioned run on sugar, fueled by fears that the price would soar after Saturday, when Polish farmers can sell their sugar beets to the larger EU market for the first time. Krzysztof Iszkowski, a 25-year-old graduate student who edits the Critical Politics quarterly, says the panic buying was a last-minute anxiety attack over EU membership.
"What do Poles do when they're afraid?" he asked. "They buy sugar and soap."
'Slova-KIA'
While Eastern Europe has experienced five straight years of economic growth, the rewards have been unevenly distributed and unemployment has risen. In the Communist era, said Polish economist Andrzej Lubowski, "there was a reasonably even distribution of misery. Now there is a sharp division between big winners and big losers."
One of the biggest winners lately is Zilina, a small industrial city in the western half of Slovakia.
"Welcome to Slova-KIA" proclaims a gleaming new sign just north of town. For this predominately rural region near the Polish border, a plan to build an $870 million Kia auto plant is considered a godsend. About 2,400 people are to work in the plant making Kia cars, with hundreds more jobs projected for local businesses supplying parts and materials to the factory.
"It's the investment of the century," proclaims Marian Janusek, Zilina's vice mayor.
To win the prize, Slovakian officials ferried the car manufacturer's executives around the country in limousines and helicopters, and Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda hosted four dinners at his official residence. But what ultimately sold the company was the combination of low taxes -- under Dzurinda's reform program, companies and individuals each pay a flat tax of 19 percent, among the lowest rates in Europe -- low wages and a location near population centers such as Bratislava, Warsaw, Vienna and Prague.
All these factors have combined to make Slovakia the new Detroit -- by late 2006, this nation of 5.4 million is projected to manufacture more cars per capita than any other country in the world, according to the London-based World Markets Research Center.
But not everyone has benefited from the new economics. A few miles north of Zilina, the small towns and villages of the Bystrica Valley are mired in poverty. Unemployment reaches 30 percent, local officials say. The national government's recent austerity programs have brought a sharp reduction in welfare payments and a $300 million shortfall in public education.
Despite the prospect of new jobs down the road in Zilina, many residents are treating the EU's arrival with profound suspicion. Janusek, who keeps a copy of the book "European Union: Everything You Should Know" on a prominent shelf next to his desk, says the fear is mostly economic. Prices of basic foodstuffs have been steadily rising, partly because the government cut back on food subsidies to lower its budget deficit and qualify for EU entry, and people fear prices will shoot up even higher after Saturday.
"We already have a social crisis because of unemployment," he said. "People are afraid we are joining an entity with a very high standard of living and that we'll be pushed too quickly."
Politicians who feed on the anger have found their fortunes rising. Former prime minister Vladimir Meciar, whose government was discredited by charges of authoritarianism, recently attempted a comeback, winning the first round of voting in presidential balloting. Meciar, a former boxer, appealed to pensioners, rural dwellers and others who felt dispossessed by the new economy, and his campaign played on ethnic tensions in a country where the Roma and Hungarian minorities are often viewed with fear and disdain. In a runoff last Sunday, he was soundly defeated by a former deputy whose views were more reserved but no less populist.
Pal Csaky, the deputy premier in charge of European integration and minority affairs, says the vote indicated that Slovakians, although wary, are determined to press forward into the new era. "It's not easy for us, but I don't see an alternative" he says.
U.S. vs. Europe
Poland and its East European neighbors are instinctively pro-American. But many people in Poland caution that U.S. policies on a matter as seemingly small as travel may be alienating Poles and causing them to favor stronger ties with Brussels.
On Piekna Street outside the entrance to the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, the line for the grand prize -- a visitor's visa to the United States -- had begun forming by 7 on a recent crisp morning. Most in the crowd were young people in bluejeans and backpacks, but there were also middle-aged applicants in suits and ties and dresses. Some had traveled all night by train to Warsaw to get here early, and by noon up to 500 had arrived.
The process can be arduous. There's a nonrefundable $100 application fee -- no small sum in a country where the average wage is $400 a month. There's the journey to Warsaw and the wait of up to several hours. And there's the interview, usually a matter of just three to four minutes, during which a consular officer has to make the judgment: Does this person truly plan just to visit relatives in Chicago, or does this person plan to remain illegally for work?
Between 25 percent and 35 percent of those who apply are rejected. Even those who aren't cannot relax. Although U.S. diplomats say an average of just one Pole a day is rejected at American airports, Polish newspapers feast on the accounts of those who are turned away, including the story of one college student who reportedly was strip-searched and held in a high-security cell because he had flown to Denver to visit friends before beginning a work-travel program in Washington.
"It's the policy of the strong over the weak," said Damian Toporowski, 24, a marketing student from the city of Staszow, as he waited in line.
Poland has 2,400 troops stationed in Iraq, and for many Poles the visa process has become a symbol of American ingratitude -- and a reason why Poland and its neighbors may ultimately come to identify more with the EU than with the United States.
"It's very hard to explain why one Polish kid is risking his life in Iraq and another kid is being stopped at the U.S. border because he happened to land in the wrong city," said Piotr Ogrodzinski, director of the department of the Americas in Poland's Foreign Ministry.
In contrast, travel to Western Europe has never been easier. Already, no visas are necessary, and after Saturday passports will not be required for citizens of the new EU members either. Those who want to work legally will need permits, but thousands are expected to continue seeking underground jobs. Many students who paid full tuition at West European universities will get an 80 percent reduction as full-fledged EU citizens.
U.S. Embassy officials are apologetic over the visa policy -- they have doubled the size of the waiting room, added three more consular officers to process applications and expanded a work-travel program for Polish students. But as long as Poland is a net exporter of labor, the restrictions will remain.
At heart "these people are Europeans," said Iszkowski, the editor of Critical Politics. "When they see the EU is not as bad as they feared, and when they see Europe is cheaper and more exciting than Kalamazoo, that's where they'll go."
A New Generation
The crowd numbered in the thousands, despite the chill wind and light rain sweeping across the park wedged between the look-alike high-rise apartment blocs on the edge of Budapest. People carried Hungarian flags and many wore lapel pins in the shape of the country -- including the parts whittled away during successive wars.
Then Viktor Orban, former student firebrand and Hungary's once and perhaps future prime minister, launched into a speech, part nationalistic, part populist, that blamed the current government for the country's falling living standards, and for inadequately protecting its interests in talks to join the EU.
"Why did we change regimes?" he asked the crowd, referring to the end of communism. "We had two aims -- freedom and security." But freedom had not brought security, he told them. The EU could help, he added, but only if Hungary aggressively pursued its own agenda.
At 40, Orban is in the vanguard of a new generation of East European leaders who see EU membership in hard-headed terms as a way of improving their troubled economies and defending their national interests. They want jobs, subsidies, development funds and access to markets.
They are less interested in pursuing deeper political integration and common foreign and defense policies. "The United States is one nation [but] the EU can never be one nation," says Orban. "We like Polish, French and Hungarian nations, that's life. And the newcomers just got back their national independence 14 years ago, so our national identity is very important to us."
In 1998, Orban became Hungary's prime minister at age 35 as head of Fidesz, which began as a student movement opposed to Soviet domination and morphed into a right-of-center political party after Soviet control collapsed. The economy performed well under the restructuring Orban instituted, but many Hungarians considered him and his allies divisive and arrogant. Fidesz lost the next election.
Now he appears set for a comeback on a platform promising to cushion the blows of capitalism with such steps as government subsidies to first-time homebuyers and a reduction in drug prices.
On the other end of the political spectrum is Istvan Ujhelyi, a Socialist member of parliament who is just 29. For his generation, he says, joining the EU could mean welcome stability after an adult life of uncertainty.
He already has something concrete to point to: a new joint Hungarian-French biotech research center, which recently set up in his legislative district in the southern town of Szeged. The facility will employ 1,000 scientists.
"This is our future -- this is what we can give to the European Union," says Ujhelyi. "If a small town like mine can have a facility like this, then everybody in Hungary can have a good life, from the students to the hairdresser."
Frankel reported from Poland and Slovakia, Richburg from Hungary. Correspondent Peter Baker in Lithuania contributed to this report.
