The expansion of the EU to include eight states, primarily from Eastern Europe, was enthusiastically celebrated 20 years ago. Economically a success story – but politically also a process of disillusionment.
On the morning of May 1, 2004, an infant made headlines in Lithuania. Pictures of him can be seen on television news programs. It’s a boy, born a few minutes after midnight. The first Lithuanian to be born a citizen of the European Union.
This is a historic turning point for his compatriots. Lithuania was not only part of the Eastern Bloc, but, like Estonia and Latvia, was a Soviet republic.
15 years after the fall of the Wall, Europe is reunified. In Warsaw and Prague, EU accession is celebrated with fireworks. Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy cuts through barbed wire on the border between Austria and Hungary. It is one of the last remnants of the Iron Curtain.
15 years earlier, his country was the first to open its borders to GDR refugees. “Such a border must never be allowed to arise in Europe again,” demanded Medgyessy, a former reform communist, on the day of EU accession. It was unimaginable at the time that his successor would call Russian President Vladimir Putin a friend 20 years later.
Remembering the struggle for freedom of the Eastern Europeans
The history of the European Union is a history of enlargement. But there have never been as many new members as in 2004: eight Eastern European countries, plus Malta and the divided island state of Cyprus.
Poland’s President Alexander Kwasniewski recommended that the West not misunderstand enlargement as an act of its own generosity. “We worked hard for this,” he shouted to his compatriots a few minutes before midnight. “We should congratulate ourselves for regaining our independence and sovereignty with our own hands.”
A few days later, in Zittau, in the border triangle of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, the overcoming of European division can be observed under the magnifying glass. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, together with his counterparts from Warsaw and Prague, Vladimir Spidla and Leszek Miller, cross the two bridges to get first from Poland to the Czech Republic and then from the Czech Republic to Germany, without any border controls.
“Who would have thought 60 years ago,” Schröder muses, “that there could be a day like this – where Europe is united and we all have the chance to make Europe a place of lasting peace?” That the same Schröder would maintain his friendship with Putin 20 years later, even after the invasion of Ukraine? Inconceivably.
A day of confidence: In 2004, Schröder, Spidla and Miller celebrated the enlargement of the EU in Zittau.
Anticipation and fears
In May 2004 there is a festive mood in the EU, but there are also worries. The German trade sees itself threatened by Polish plumbers, and there is also talk of low-wage workers who could disrupt the labor market. Southern Europeans fear that the much-loved funding from the Brussels community pool will tend to flow eastwards in the future.
Some worries are coming true. As a result of the cohesion policy, with which Brussels promotes the development of weaker regions in Europe, increased funds have flowed from Western to Eastern Europe over the past two decades, while the flow of money to the south has decreased. Nevertheless, economists today see the eastward expansion as a success story for both sides.
The new ones have been able to more than triple their foreign trade since joining the EU – thanks to integration into the internal market. In Poland alone, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has doubled since 2004.
And Slovenia, a model country of economic integration, achieved a GDP per capita in 2022 that was almost 80 percent of the EU average. This is followed by Estonia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia and Slovakia. All of this also helped the many Western European companies that were able to conquer new markets in the East.
More than just an ATM?
One of the successes of eastward expansion is that many of the new countries were able to consolidate and further develop their democratic government system based on European principles of the rule of law. But part of the whole picture is that the two countries that benefited most from the EU funding programs had the biggest problems with the democratic constitutional state.
For Warsaw and Budapest, Brussels seems to be a kind of ATM, the saying has been circulating in the European Parliament for a long time – an ATM from which you can withdraw money without worrying about the bank’s rules.
During the years of PiS rule, Poland clearly drifted towards an authoritarian course. Since Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s party was voted out of power last year, Warsaw has re-emerged as a reliable partner among heads of state and government, with the decidedly pro-European Donald Tusk at the helm. Many people in Brussels believe that a development towards authoritarianism can also be reversed.
Things look different in Hungary. Even after the recent election, Prime Minister Viktor Orban can rely on the broad majority of his compatriots, even though he harasses the opposition, freelance journalists and lawyers. And ensures that funding from Brussels goes primarily to its own people.
What remained of Hungary’s enthusiasm
Back to May 2004. Péter Balás has just moved into his new office in Berlaymont, he is the first Hungarian EU Commissioner. Like all ten new commissioners, he is now fully entitled to vote, even if he does not yet have his own department, that will come later. Balás is a trained diplomat, he expresses himself carefully, but still gets into raptures. “The fact that we now have the same rights as Hungarian citizens is invaluable,” he says in an interview with ARD studio Brussels. “Traveling across borders with an identity card, possibly taking up work in another EU country, doing studies, and so on,” Balás lists, giving the impression in the conversation that all of this is still a miracle for him. “The equal treatment of Hungarian citizens, that’s important!”
Balas had previously been Hungarian ambassador to the EU, his residence was an open house for critical minds, it resembled a liberal salon. Invitations were highly sought after by Brussels journalists. That twenty years later Hungary could become a pariah among Europe’s democracies? Inconceivably.