You Won’t Believe How Central Europe is Embracing its Diverse Roots!

Happy to see you again. The right-wing governments of Hungary and Poland are once again annoying their liberal European critics. Slovakia’s political direction raises concerns ahead elections in september. But the Czech Republic seems in a happier place. You can find me at tony.barber@ft.com.

The four countries belong to the so-called Visegrad Group, and in some ways it is useful to compare their politics, culture and history. Still, the similarities should not be overstated. This is why, for the title of this newsletter, I have used the expression “return to diversity”.

It’s the title of quite a brilliant book on Central and Eastern Europe since the Second World War by the American scholar Joseph Rothschild. It lays out the case that although all the countries in the region were locked down under Stalinism in the late 1940s, their later histories – before and after the overthrow of communism in 1989 – show that they are very diverse places. . Exactly.

Hungary offends Poland

Few high-level European leaders attended the funeral in Milan Wednesday by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. One of them was Viktor Orbán, Hungarian Prime Minister. Obviously, he fondly remembers Berlusconi’s conservative policies, not to mention the Ridercontempt for the independence of justice and sympathy for Vladimir Putin’s Russia. (Here is my Berlusconi obituary.)

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put Orbán at odds with Hungary’s Central European neighbors. It’s not just a matter of Orbán’s lack of enthusiasm for Western military and financial support for kyiv. This is how Hungarian officials sometimes offend their partners in Visegrad.

Take Gábor Böröndi, the chief of the Hungarian general staff. Last month he describes the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939 as “a local war” which led to World War II due to the lack of a “peace process”.

Not a word of Nazi atrocities, or of the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland that quickly followed the German attack from the west. No wonder the Polish ambassador in Budapest is furious.

In all fairness, Orbán’s Hungary does not have a monopoly in Central Europe on non-diplomatic commentary. Two years ago, Igor Matovič, then Prime Minister of Slovakia, was asked in a radio interview what his government had promised Moscow in exchange for supplies of Russian Sputnik V Covid vaccine. “Transcarpathian Ukraine,” he replied, referring to the westernmost region of that country.

Matovič pointed out that it was a joke (extremely tasteless, given that Putin had already annexed Crimea in 2014), but the Slovak Foreign Ministry felt obliged to apologize to Ukraine . As far as I know, Hungary did not apologize for Böröndi’s remarks about Poland.

EU rotating presidency

It’s not just Poland that is fed up with Orbán. Two weeks ago, the European Parliament adopted a resolution wonder whether Hungary should be allowed to hold the rotating EU presidency for six months when its turn comes in July 2024.

The motion passed by a landslide of 442 to 144, suggesting that most European politicians are fed up with Orbán’s speech. repeated attacks on the EU, democratic backsliding and the abuse of the rule of law.

In all likelihood, Hungary will not be denied the presidency, and neither will Poland, whose turn will follow in the first half of 2025 and which is locked in similar disputes with the EU over the rule of law. Other EU governments fear setting a precedent that could one day be used against themselves.

Meanwhile, differences between Hungary and the EU over the rule of law and other issues mean that it is still excluded from the 27-nation bloc’s post-pandemic recovery fund. The EU is also withholding money from its regional aid programs.

In total, Hungary is missing around 36 billion euros. Such largesse would certainly be helpful, given that — according to ING Bank — Hungary real gross domestic product has been declining since mid-2022.

The Polish “Lex Tusk”

Poland’s government led by the conservative nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party is also being denied stimulus and regional aid funds. But just recently, a new problem has arisen.

This is a law supposed to prevent pro-Russian politicians from gaining public office. Now, anyone with a passing knowledge of Polish history and the national mindset might think that the fingers of a pair of hands are more than enough to count all the pro-Kremlin politicians in Poland.

This is why the law is informally known as the the “Lex Tusk”, according to Donald Tusk, the former President of the European Council and Leader of the Opposition. His supporters suspect that it is Tusk, and not those mysterious pro-Russian politicians, who may become the target of the law.

Poland must hold elections before the end of the year and the PiS will have its work cut out for it to obtain an overall parliamentary majority. This is the context in which to understand the Lex Tusk. On the elections, please read this great analysis by Aleks Szczerbiak of the possibility that the radical right-wing Confederation Party will emerge as kingmaker after the vote.

Refugees and migrants

Despite their deep differences over Ukraine, Hungary and Orbán’s Poland under PiS are in tune on another issue: EU policy towards refugees and non-EU migrants. The seriousness of this problem was underscored on Wednesday when at least 78 people died after a fishing boat believed to have left Libya capsized in the Mediterranean. Several hundred other people were still missing on Thursday.

Less than a week before this horrific incident, EU interior ministers reached an agreement on reforming the bloc’s asylum and migration procedures. Only two governments opposed the deal – Hungary and Poland.

Each displays implacable hostility to any measure involving the reception of non-European refugees and migrants (not the Ukrainians, however: Poland deserves a lot of credit for its efficient accommodation of more than a million war refugees, and Hungary also contributed on a smaller scale).

Slovakia: populism against civil society

Slovakia’s highly fragmented political party system makes it difficult to predict the outcome of the early elections which will be held on September 30. But opinion polls suggest the favorite is Smer, an ostensibly centre-left party led by former Prime Minister Robert Fico.

The prospect of another government led by Fico does not fill EU and NATO policymakers with joy. Like Orbán, he is a national populist who is skeptical of Western sanctions against Russia. I don’t think I’m alone in seeing him as anything less than a model of democratic purity.

In this insightful article on Slovakia, Tim Gosling observes that Fico has been “accused [by opponents] to overthrow the country’s democratic institutions in order to build a “mafia state” during its decade of political domination.

You may remember that Fico resigned as Prime Minister in 2018 after mass protests sparked by the murders of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée. Although it is clear that Kuciak was killed because he was investigating corruption in Slovakia, the lawsuits sparked by the case did not, in my view, fully answer the question of who wanted him dead.

Other aspects of public life distinguish Slovakia from the rest of Central Europe. First, he has one of the most Russophile companies in Europe, even if mentalities are changing a bit because of the war in Ukraine.

Second, it was heartening to see how public outrage over the killings of 2018 led to the election as president of Zuzana Čaputová, an anti-corruption lawyer.

As Tim Haughton and his colleagues at the University of Birmingham write in this precious guide to global authoritarian trends, Slovakia shows that democracy can be defended if civil society is mobilized and if talented individuals from non-political backgrounds participate in elections.

The Czech exception

And so to the Czech Republic, which in some respects goes against the trend in Central Europe. In parliamentary elections almost two years ago, the centrist and conservative parties ousted the Ano (Yes) party of Andrej Babiš, a billionaire businessman whose political career, marked by frequent run-ins with the law, looks more like a bit like that of Berlusconi.

Then, last January, a retired NATO commander called Petr Pavel defeated Babiš in the Czech presidential election. After Čaputová’s success in Slovakia in 2019, Pavel’s triumph represented a second victory for a non-professional politician in Central Europe.

What is important is that neither Pavel nor Čaputová are anti-establishment troublemakers. On the contrary, each is a personality with moderate political views and firm pro-Western perspectives.

Back to diversity? Maybe I should have chosen the title “back to common sense”!

More on this topic

Verification of populist tide – for now. An Analysis for Social Europe by Vít Dostál, Executive Director of the Prague-based Association for International Affairs

Tony’s picks of the week

• Western countries are planning much larger defense budgets due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but raising funds will involve politically difficult choices on taxation and spending cuts elsewhere, reports John Paul Rathbone of the FT

• A Chinese-built highway promises to turn the southern Caucasus state of Georgia into a crucial link between Europe and Asia, but the project is being pursued by environmental concerns and questions about how the contract was awarded, Reid Standish and Tamuna Chkareuli write for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

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Europe Express is edited by Georgina Quach.

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