Polexit? New Iron Curtain Divides Europe, with Conservative East v Liberal West

Riches galore

Across the continent’s east, voters largely bit their tongues during EU accession because the lure of Brussels’ cash pile and the freedom to work in the more prosperous West was too tempting to decline.

However, now they’ve settled into the bloc and reaped the initial benefits, Eurocrats are discovering that a sort of ideological ‘Iron Curtain’ still separates many of the former Warsaw Pact states from their new allies.

Because, let’s be clear, despite the EU’s many successes in encouraging European unity, there are different historical memories and varying degrees of religious observance across the continent. And this lack of a common narrative or belief system makes consensus hard to manufacture.

For instance, Germany feels it has a moral duty to help vulnerable migrants, which partly stems from a collective obligation to pay penance for sins of the past. At the same time, the likes of France, Britain, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands are former colonial powers, with long-held and deep associations with countries in far-flung regions of the world.

But Eastern and Central Europe are different. Even in Austria, a nominally ‘Western’ state (despite Vienna being geographically east of Prague), the immigrants have provoked a political backlash. For instance, regions have cut benefits and the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) has entered government.

Two worlds collide

The problem for Brussels is that the EU’s new members from east of Berlin have a different concept of European values than their Western peers.

Largely former members of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, and later the ‘Eastern Bloc’, they generally define European values through a Christian perspective, in opposition to the liberalism popular in contemporary France, Germany and Britain. Furthermore, many had historical experiences of conflict with the Turkish-led Ottoman Empire, which helps fuel specific anti-Muslim sentiment.

There are also grievances with economic progress since EU accession. For instance, the huge difference in salary levels between the Western and Eastern countries of the bloc is a major bugbear for the latter.

So much so that several of them, including Poland, Slovakia and Croatia, recently established the ‘WageUnion’ initiative, demanding wage equalization. While even EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker concedes how “in a Union of equals, there can be no second-class citizens.”

Yet, any attempt to bring East European wages closer to levels in Ireland, Denmark or Belgium will also have the effect of exposing demographic difficulties in richer members, making them even more reliant on migrants from outside the EU.

Kipling’s “East is East, and West is West” argument was made in a different time and about an even wider chasm. However, it is reasonable to suggest a new Iron Curtain is descending across Central Europe.

The difference this time is that battle is between conservatism and liberalism. Not communism and capitalism. Donald Tusk knows these dangers. And that’s why his warning of a potential ‘Polexit’ should be taken seriously by other EU leaders.