Entering Europe in order to grow” “

According to Entraide d’Eglises, a Belgian non-profit association that promotes aid projects for education, information, culture and social life in various countries of Eastern Europe (including Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Romania and Poland), “the countries that recently emerged from Communism fear finding themselves in a single bloc that would reduce their re-found independence”. In Western Europe, on the other hand, “some fear enlargement because they think that the entry of the poorer countries – where wages are very low – will penalize the more affluent countries because workers from Eastern Europe will flock to the West in large numbers and cause a growth of unemployment. But these are imaginary fears that don’t stand up to an examination of economic and demographic realities”. In fact, recalls Pierre Delooz of “Entraide d’Eglises”, “the history of the European Union is made up of successful enlargements. When Italy, or Spain, or Portugal, or Greece applied for and obtained entry into the EU, there was no shortage of those who predicted an intolerable influx of impoverished workers from countries with a history of high emigration. But quite the opposite happened. Free circulation immediately stopped their emigration, because it permitted capital to be locally invested and thus to create better paid employment”. One well-founded fear, on the other hand, according to Delooz, is “that of the reaction of the countries of Eastern Europe to a consumer society that will not fail to impose itself on them too”: “Experience has shown that this type of society is extremely contagious, if not irreversible, and one can therefore understand why the Churches are concerned by the power of advertising over the young”. In Hungary the referendum on enlargement was held on 12 April. A large majority, 83%, voted “yes” in favour of EU membership, but only 44% of the Hungarian population went to the polls, “due both to the lack of an information campaign, and because – according to some – the decisions had already been taken in Brussels”, explains Msgr. Andràs Veres, auxiliary bishop of Eger and secretary of the Hungarian Episcopal Conference, which had urged the faithful to turn out and vote. “But many Christians – points out Veres – are not in favour of enlargement, because they think there are still too many question marks hanging over it. Some negotiations went badly for Hungary. The EU had promised to help this country by supporting agriculture, but it was decided in the end to allocate only 25% of the promised aid. This is a problem, because after having suffered under the USSR – while the countries of Western Europe could reach very high levels of development thanks to the Marshall Plan – the countries of Eastern Europe will continue to suffer because they risk being second-class citizens within the Union”. In the view of Veres, there are many risks linked to the economic aspects: capital investments to create new jobs, for instance, might not, after all, be so advantageous for Hungary. “We don’t have positive experiences in this field – he says – because Western entrepreneurs arrived here over the last ten years and exploited the situation (low taxes and low-cost manpower) and then, once the period of favourable taxation ended, closed their factories, causing a growth in unemployment which is now about 4.5% in Hungary”. At the political level there are also apprehensions that the country’s political autonomy will be reduced. “You need to understand that these countries only regained their freedom recently – he explains – so people fear entry into another Union, even though I continue to explain to them that it will be a democracy and not a dictatorship as in the past”. The concerns about social legislation on issues of bioethics and the family (euthanasia, abortion, gay marriages, etc.) are, in his view, “without foundation” because “all these problems are already present in Hungary, so the situation won’t change, on the contrary we hope that by joining together with the Christians of the West we will be able to change this mentality”. So do the fears outweigh the hopes? In sum, in the view of Bishop Veres, “if we don’t enter the European Union we’ll become the pawns of another power, because Russia and China are already waiting in the wings. To avoid this danger it’s therefore better to enter Europe”.