In person icon Central and Eastern Europe: Scepticism Towards the EU or Towards the (Imagined) West?

Abstract

After the transition period, when the post-socialist region was attributed with governments and political elites strongly committed to making progress towards European integration, the post-transition period (i.e. the last one decade) can be regarded as full of anti-establishment energy. The academic analysis of political and socio-cultural trends within Central and Eastern Europe provides us with precious findings about democratic backsliding, authoritarianism, populism and Euroscepticism. However, a kind of internal contradiction seems to evolve between the emerging electorate supporting Eurosceptic political forces and the steady majority behind supporting EU membership. Even within societies whose political governments could be regarded as having the most anti-EU stances (Poland until 2023, Hungary), the vernacular commitment towards EU membership is steadily high. So the question emerges: how can we conceptualize this contradictory situation? Euroscepticism studies have already tackled this question, and partially resolved it by categorizing the types of Euroscepticism differently: not all the forms of Euroscepticism implies a will of exiting the EU. But the question remains with us, what kind of political ideas are shared by the pro-EU voters of EU-sceptic parties? What visions are 'supplied' to them, what discursive practices and especially memory practices spread these approaches? The hypothesis which motivated the submission of this panel is that we ought to separate the concept of West-scepticism from EU-scepticism. West, this case, is rather a metonymic conceptualization of an imaginary welfare-lifestyle, which was the idealized target horizon of the Central and Eastern European countries after the fall of Communism, but it became a subject of criticism and embodiment of some illusions. West-scepticism is fueled both by demand (transition fatigue) and supply (blame-game against an imagined outer power from the side of political actors), but the discourse itself can resonate to a typical Central and Eastern European nation-centred historical narration, full of grievances against various Western power centres. The panel consists of analyses of Central and Eastern European economic policies, electoral behaviour and political discourse. ú Papers about economic policies tackle how a distorted version of the idea of developmental statism gained room in this region, which main principle is denying the neoliberal ‘Western’ pathway, meanwhile not emphasising the importance of international competitiveness; it offers rather a kind of (perception of) political patronage. Electoral behaviour is addressed by a paper about the effect of migration crises (2015 and 2022) on Central and Eastern European political attitudes. As it highlights, a kind of difference can be revealed between perception of ‘Western’ style of asylum (inclusion of refugees and immigrants from non-European countries) and ‘non-Western’ style of asylum (inclusion of Ukrainian fled the war); first is interpreted as a problem of ‘North-South’ post-colonial interrelatedness, where CEE insists on the position of outer observer. Paper about the political discourse presents a thorough analysis of how phrases of Westernization started to fade away from the vernacular vocabulary, meanwhile new historical narratives and fragmented memory practices have emerged which already deny the earlier imagination about a perennial belonging to the West: from this perspective, CEE had not been ‘lagged behind’ in the 20th century and before, but followed a kind of ‘own way’. However scrutiny of these topics are inspired by Central and Eastern European case studies, their relevance seems to go beyond the region, since this West-scepticism is already embodied in formulating altogether three factions within the EPP.

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