Eastern Europeans ‘ambivalent’ about EU
EU enlargement could be jeopardised by a lack of grass-roots support in eastern European countries.
That’s according to the latest research from the Economic and Social Research Council, which suggests that local ‘elites’ – officials, business people, and the media – could prevent accession countries from fully implementing the new regulations tied to their European Union membership.
Dr. Jim Hughes of the London School of Economics, who led the project, commented: “The exclusion of sub-national elites from the negotiation process, and their lack of knowledge and ambivalent attitudes towards the EU could have a far-reaching effect on their commitment to the implementation of EU legislation once the candidates become member states of the EU, especially as regards agriculture, regional development and the environment.”
The study comprised a series of interviews in Hungary, Romania, Poland, Slovenia and Estonia – five of the ten countries hoping to join the EU in 2004 – as well as in Russia and Ukraine.
Key opinion-formers outside the capital cities seemed particularly unaware of one of the major factors that could swing them in favour of EU accession – the financial benefits.
Despite the fact that some of the regions covered have already received substantial EU aid, most local opinion-makers identified the economic and security dimensions of the union as being unimportant, and ranked the structural funds and subsidies relatively low down when asked what the EU meant to them.
Dr. Hughes suggests that the EU needs to abandon its ‘top-down’ approach and to focus instead on “pro-active interaction from the bottom-up in building European integration.”
However, despite the evidence in Dr. Hughes’s research six of the eight eastern European accession candidates – Slovenia, Hungary, Lithuania, Slovakia,, Poland, and the Czech Republic – have already held referendums where the public backed EU entry, with residents in Latvia and Estonia expected to register a ‘yes’ vote in September.
