Living to see Baltics fitter than Germany

By Robert Cottrell

Date: 19/05/05

I am packing my bags again. But not for a general election in Bulgaria, nor a conference in Budapest, nor any of the other diversions which have brought me so much pleasure while working in central Europe. I am off to America, and a new life as the New York correspondent of The Economist.

I commend to you my friend and colleague, Edward Lucas, who succeeds me as Central Europe correspondent of The Economist, and, from next week, as author of this column. Edward is a brilliant writer and a tireless traveller whose fascination with Central Europe goes back 20 years. There is nobody to whom I would yield this space more readily. One of my great satisfactions in this job has been to see virtue rewarded, following the end of communism. People across Central Europe have worked hard through uncertainties and reversals, telling themselves that, if this transition is painful for them, the gains will go to their children.

Those gains are coming through. Incomes, especially in the Baltics, are still much lower than in western Europe, but they are growing much faster.

I am tolerably confident that the average income in Estonia and Latvia will exceed the average income in Germany within my lifetime, so long as I watch my diet and the Russians behave themselves. This ought to please even the Germans, since they spend so much time complaining about cheap labour from the East, but I fear that in practice it will merely add to their sense of injustice.

It has been equally pleasing to see that the example of Central Europe's success is inspiring countries further east. Georgians are looking to the Baltic states, Ukrainians to Poland, Moldovans to Romania. They are asking: if the Balts and the Poles and the Romanians can develop well-functioning market economies and durable democratic institutions, if they can join the European Union, then why should Georgians and Ukrainians and Moldovans not do the same? The answer is that they can and they should. But they need the right degree of encouragement from Brussels, and shame on Brussels if it lets them down.

The great worry here, of course, is the diminishing appetite in Western Europe for further EU enlargement. The emerging line in western capitals is that Ukraine cannot be accepted as a candidate for EU membership at least until negotiations with Turkey have been more or less completed. That will mean keeping Ukraine waiting for ten years at best, and possibly for ever.

Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, proposed this week that his country should apply for membership once it has successfully completed its current "action plan" of reforms, agreed with the EU. That should take three years.

This is a much better formula, and the European Union should endorse it.

I said in my final column of 2004 that it had been a great year for Europe, a year which had brought EU and NATO enlargements, peaceful revolution in Ukraine and deep political change in Romania.

This year has started well too, thanks mainly to American diplomacy. George W. Bush's two European trips have put transatlantic relations back on course, brought confidence to the Baltics, and given hope to the Caucasus.

Let us hope next for a 'No' vote in the French referendum, the surrender of Ante Gotovina, victory for Civic Platform in the Polish general election, peaceful revolution in Belarus and smooth passage through national parliaments for the Romanian and Bulgarian accession treaties.

I shall be watching enviously from a distance - and preparing to return to these pages with a new column, from America, in the autumn.

• Robert Cottrell is Central Europe correspondent for The Economist.

Author takes a look at political and economic prospects for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.