Wealthy EU states treat Eastern Europe as a colony

https://unherd.com/2021/09/the-eus-secret-empire/

by chewz • 5 years ago

24 15 5 years ago

birbs2• 5 years ago

Are the non-EU states like Belarus and Ukraine really better off than CEE EU states? While the situation may not be ideal for the CEE EU states, the alternative doesn't seem great either.

smorgusofborg• 5 years ago

It seems like a hit piece to me. Nothing is compared to other brain drains that happen through out the global economy. In the EU system places like Prague and Tallinn have grown and reasonable amounts of money comes back with retirees in Europe. In countries with greater wealth inequality how do the brain drains play out?

beezischillin• 5 years ago

I don’t know what to say to that, other than to talk about my experience living in Eastern Eruope: about two of my friends are the ones who remained in the country, everyone else has gone to the west, whether Austria, Germany or the UK, they all understood that there’s a better life waiting for them there (with its own pros and cons, of course). So very few remain with the will and the courage to wish for a system that’s not corrupt and fundamentally broken. And not just the people in STEM. Natural resources are also increasingly leaving, whether legally or through bribes to officials.

And the money, something which always gets thrown at Eastern Europe, how it benefits from incredible amounts of grants - that tends to end up in private pockets and not in restoration, infrastructure or innovation.

Again, I can’t tell you what the way forward should be, because I don’t see it myself and I’m certainly not smart enough to imagine it, but what’s happening is certainly noticeable even to individuals.

birbs2• 5 years ago

My point is that all those things happen in Belarus as well, except even worse. The average salary in Poland is around $1500 usd. In Belarus, it’s 300. In Ukraine, it’s around 800. Belarus is not immune from brain drain, either. Those who can leave, do leave. So the author should consider the alternative to joining the EU before calling the relationship exploitive.

mmarq4• 5 years ago

The same happens in Southern Europe and membership of the EU allowed me to get a 6-digit income and to live in a country where I don’t need a political affiliation to get a decent job and where the state bureaucracy is not merely a welfare system for government employees.

I’m not sure I’d blame this state of affairs on the countries that decided to not be economic basket-cases. What should Germany do? Cut its productivity or destroy its value chains?

RicoElectrico• 5 years ago

The CEE states have seen strong economic growth and they are treated in quite colonial fashion by the old EU. These things are not mutually exclusive.

If anybody scratches their heads why PiS and Fidesz happened, that's one of the reasons why.

Old EU can follow letter of the law, yet it's still evident that companies from CEE can't compete with those who can out-capital them, and who discriminate against them in a million subtle ways.

bsksi• 5 years ago

And the PIIGS countries also.

mmarq4• 5 years ago

In the East, meanwhile, the elites are shamed to silence, for they’re complicit in a population collapse of wartime scale. Croatia has lost almost a quarter of its people (an existential meltdown, one premier dared to moan). Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic three of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia have seen a fifth of workers go. Poland has lost over a tenth.

Are we saying that, say, the Polish state owns the Poles and if the latter go abroad they are stolen goods?

The rest of the article seems to assume that Poland would be better off outside of the German value chain, which borders insanity.

mensetmanusman• 5 years ago

Not own, but since they invested billions into education that has seen a net negative return, there is reason to fret a downward spiral unless those that benefit rebalance the load.

mmarq4• 5 years ago

Yes, the local political class and elites should take responsibility and act so that people stop expatriating, if that’s really what they want. What the article suggests is that we blame the foreigner, ie the German and the Briton, because they allow educated Poles and Italians to earn a decent salary.

Besides, in Poland we are starting to see a reversal, as the country keeps growing and becoming richer, net migration has become positive. So one may argue that Western Europe, while benefiting from the Polish workforce it imported, also acted as a relief valve for Polish unemployment, while the country was catching up with the west.

Viliam1234• 5 years ago

Are we Eastern Europeans supposed to cry that the Iron Curtain is no longer here to protect us from moving to places with higher quality of life?

Wealthy EU states treat Eastern Europe as a colony

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