Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

Introduction 7
and economic transition of post-communist applicant states to liberal capitalist
market societies poses a challenge to the financial and political cohesion within the
European Union. Moreover, a considerable shift in the financial resources of
the European Union’s budget from the less-favoured regions of Western Europe to
the new Eastern European members is envisaged to speed up their economic
adaptation to the single market. The differences in political institutions and cultural
mentalities challenge the political coherence and cultural convergence of the
European Union.
Not least, the Eastern enlargement raises the thorny issue of the Eastern borders
of the European Union: the Europeanness of Russia (see the chapter by Stölting in
this volume) or Turkey remains under question. Taken together, the Eastern
enlargement considerably strengthens the centrifugal and potentially fragmenting
forces within an extended European governance regime while, at the same
time, it strengthens the legitimacy of the European Union as a political project
that promotes democracy and Western liberalism. Overall, the course of the Eastern
enlargement process in its timing, spatial scope and final outcome still remains
contested in both member states and accession countries (see Spohn on Germany
and Poland in this volume, and also Euronat Project Reports 2002, www.iue.it/
RSC/Euronat).
From the Central and Eastern European applicants’ perspective and particularly
in the view of large parts of the post-communist elites, the hesitant development of
the Eastern enlargement is rather disappointing. As compared to the original high
hopes for the return to Europe, the impression is growing that Western Europe is
rather reluctant to include Eastern Europe. With it, the hoped-for geopolitical
protection against the potentially renewing Russian power is only partially settled,
the expected acceleration of the crisis-prone economic transformation processes
is postponed and the stabilising support for the consolidation of the still young
democratic regimes remains weak. At the same time, the more the processes of the
Eastern enlargement are actually underway, the more the potential critical effects
of the European Union on the post-communist societies in Central and Eastern
Europe are feared. These fears concern particularly the loss of the recently attained
national sovereignty by the incorporation into the Western European governance
regime and the renewed peripheral status vis-à-vis Western Europe. There are also
fears concerning the critical impact of the superior Western economy on the
potentially weakened sectors of the post-communist economies and the imagined
threats to the national cultures and identities by the secular and materialist culture
of Western Europe. In essence, these concerns and fears in the Central and Eastern
European applicant states crystallise around the fear that the European Union will
limit the model of the sovereign nation-state that has been at the core of the Eastern
European revolutions and post-communist transformations. Thus, while in the
actual member states’ public discourses, Central and Eastern Europeans are
perceived as distant brethren or indeed as distant aliens (Triandafyllidou 2002a), the
populations in accession countries – Poland is the most obvious case in point (see
the chapter by Marody in this volume) – grow increasingly disenchanted with the
prospect of becoming part of the European Union.