Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

the first phase of negotiations after 1989, only a special association
was envisaged, with the prospect of membership only for
Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The PHARE programme first
of all, then the partnership strategy for membership, prepared for
the last phase of negotiations, which began on 30 March 1998 and
led to the entry of ten new countries on 1 May 2004.
These negotiations were conducted on both sides by a bureaucratic
apparatus – and it probably could not have been otherwise.
Sometimes they seemed like a humiliating experience for the candidate
countries, or at least that is how their respective public opinions
felt – populations, like individuals, never feel comfortable when
they have to sit an exam. Communication was not a strong point of
the negotiators, and public opinion in both the original Member
States and the candidate countries received little information.
During the course of this European ‘matriculation’ exam, this ‘baccalaureate
for the people’, there was too little room for political
dialogue, for questions of culture and education, for the problems
of innovation, high-tech industry and centres of excellence, as if
these subjects were the sole preserve of the existing Member
States and should remain off the horizon and outside the capabilities
of the candidate countries. Nevertheless, these negotiations
and the support systems set up by the EU deserve a positive assessment
– at least as regards the 2004 accession. Behind the
negotiations, there was a profound and sincere effort by the candidate
countries to progress as quickly as possible towards a market
economy. Even the most sceptical – or most cautious – analysts
of the economic transition note that the countries of Central Europe,
which after 1989 experienced a spectacular fall in GDP for several
years, found stability again and until 2004 enjoyed growth rates
comparable with that of the European Union. After accession, the
economic performance of these countries has improved considerably.
Nevertheless, in 2004, a prominent observer could still say
that the lyrical illusion that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall was
itself followed by the sudden development of a sustained, multifaceted
crisis, and that while ten years before, transition could be
equated with freedom, it now seemed to mean mass poverty and
threats to the social acquis of Western Europe through pressure
from relocations, organised crime and mafias. Four years on, it has
35 Bronisław Geremek