GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

In late September, I attended a meeting of civil society representatives from a vastly complex part of the world now condensed into an odd-sounding acronym – GMENA:  Greater Middle East and North Africa.  These earnest activists were talking intently about how they could engineer change to bring about political and economic reform in closed societies across the Middle East.  It was my first introduction into the realm of democracy-building in this part of the world.  But if I had closed my eyes and if the names had changed from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan to Ukraine, Poland, and Romania, the entire conversation could have taken place 14 years ago in a smoky Prague pub talking about the road to democratic transformation in Eastern Europe.

I have spent the better part of the last decade working alongside committed reformers throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans.  One of the most memorable of these years was spent in Prague in 1994.  Indeed the accession of eight former communist countries to the European Union last May was among the most heady events of my life.  This was something that I and dozens of people I know had contributed to in ways both small and large.  So listening to the experienced civil society pros from the wildly diverse GMENA region brought back memories, both optimistic and sobering.

While we can count as remarkable the steady, sometimes uneven, reform that has been implemented in the Baltics, Central Europe, Romania, and Bulgaria, we don’t have to look very far to see that the arrival of full-fledged liberal democracy elsewhere in the east of Europe is anything but assured.  While the war-torn areas of the Balkans seem to have stabilized and most countries there continue to make halting steps towards the transatlantic community, the states to the east are not.  Belarus is the last remaining dictatorship in Europe. Vladimir Putin seems intent on squelching all opposition in Russia in the name of increased security, and the continued misery in both Ukraine and Moldova all point to the need for redoubled efforts by the international community to bring these countries into the family of democracies.

The developments of the last year represent a critical turning point for countries like the Czech Republic.  Czechs are no longer the subjects of plans by the international community, they are an active part of it.  As full members of both NATO and the European Union, the Czech Republic and its neighbors must be fully engaged in the struggle to pull countries like Ukraine and Belarus towards the West.  The conversation I witnessed among the GMENA civil society groups redounded with familiar problems and proposed solutions.  Likewise, the problems faced by places like Ukraine and Moldova are familiar.

Democratic reform is a difficult process, one that requires energetic and timely intervention by creative civil society organizations.  These change agents are often persecuted and rely on help from outside.  Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian NGOs have a critically important role to play in working with their counterparts in these countries.  Likewise, government agencies and private groups from throughout Central Europe should see it as their number one international priority to get these countries to their east on track for deep and sustained democratic and economic reform.

Having spent two years living in Romania and two more living in Hungary in the early 1990s, I keep a particularly close eye on the relations between those two countries.  For many years, I watched in amazement as the Hungarian and Romanian governments antagonized each other over the treatment of ethnic Hungarians living in Romania.  Hungarian governments have fundamentally misplayed this situation.  While their concerns for the rights and safety of ethnic Hungarians living in Romania are appropriate and genuine, it seems patently obvious that the best way to improve the lives of the ethnic minorities in Romania is to do whatever it takes to get Romania into the European Union.  But instead of being the greatest champion of Romania’s accession to the EU, Hungary has spent the better part of a decade undermining Romania’s efforts.  Hungarians left outside of the EU’s borders will certainly have a less prosperous and less secure future than if they are inside the EU.  Hungary itself will be a less secure place if its eastern and southern border remain the outermost boundary of the EU over the long haul.

Hungary, Czech Republic, and the other new EU members should work relentlessly to ensure that the family of democracies and the outer reaches of the EU extend as far east as possible.  Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, and Hungarians should not make the same mistake as the Hungarians have with Romania.  They should reach out aggressively, though civil society, business, and the policy community, to their counterparts in Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and even Russia to assist reformers in those countries as they struggle against anti-democratic forces alive and well there.

Without intense efforts by the new EU members to reach out to the reformers in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and elsewhere, and without similarly active lobbying within the EU to encourage bold thinking about further EU enlargement, countries like Czech Republic will look out in a few years time and see new division in Europe, one between themselves and their undemocratic neighbors to the east.  Suddenly the stability that we now take for granted in Europe may not look so sure.

Phillip Henderson is vice president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Washington, DC-based group focused on transatlantic relations.  He has been active in civil society development in Central and Eastern Europe since 1992.