First column of Mark Adomanis(Forbes) for the Moscow Times : The problem is that when they describe the benefits of EU integration, and the guaranteed rapid growth that it brings, both the Brussels mandarins and the Eastern Europeans are describing a world that no longer exists. Europe in 2014 is a much more austere place than it was when Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic started their long march towards membership. This is true not just in an existential sense, but in very basic questions about material and financial assistance. Put simply, the generous support that helped guide the first round of new EU entrants is now politically impossible. If Ukraine wants to become part of Europe, its going to have to do something that none of the other EU entrants did: its going to have to pay its own way. In other words, Ukraine is going to have to simultaneously confront all of its own most significant political interest groups and it is going to have to do so on a shoestring budget. The Russians, meanwhile, will be able to offer financial and political support to whatever populist political figure arises to confront the new austerity campaign and they can do so confident that the pro-European groups are going to have to pay their own way. If Ukrainians want to be in Europe that is entirely their choice to make. But no one should underestimate the difficulty of the path that the country is now embarking on: it is fraught with political and economic difficulty and with an endless series of opportunities for the Russians to play the spoiler.
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 06:18:50 +0000
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