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War Deepens a Regional Divide [1]

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Date: 2024-02

Overall, the 11 EU member states in this report experienced an aggregate decline in democratic governance, though it was the least they had fallen in a single year since 2010. A year is a short time in the trajectory of such a large subregion. After more than a decade in which their rights and institutions have been under attack by illiberal and antidemocratic actors, it remains unclear whether these countries have begun a democratic revival or a mere pause in their long-term deterioration.

An emerging rift between Hungary and Poland

The most notable change in the group of EU member states over the past year has been the split in the Democracy Score trends of the decade’s two most precipitous decliners: Hungary and Poland. Since the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in 2015, Poland’s democratic performance has worsened in tandem with that of Hungary under the leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his illiberal Fidesz party. In 2022, however, Poland’s slide was interrupted, while Hungary’s continued apace.

Events in Hungary put Fidesz’s antidemocratic machinations in full view. The March parliamentary elections were rife with irregularities, abuses of administrative resources, and media distortions, resulting in another supermajority for the Fidesz-led coalition. Government-backed smear campaigns against critical NGOs and members of the National Judicial Council—considered to be Hungary’s last reservoir of judicial independence—demonstrated the Orbán regime’s deepening intolerance of dissenting voices.

In Poland, meanwhile, abuses of power and actions that betrayed contempt for liberal democracy continued on several fronts. For example, the Ministry of Education and Science’s decision to award grants to foundations with close ties to PiS and no track record of educational activities underscored the ruling elite’s self-dealing tendencies. But PiS still has far less control over electoral outcomes than its counterpart in Hungary, and Polish voters will have an opportunity to choose a new direction in parliamentary elections scheduled for later this year.

Another important point of difference between these two countries is their respective responses to the invasion of Ukraine. Warsaw has remained one of Kyiv’s most ardent supporters, welcoming millions of Ukrainian refugees—despite its record of blocking asylum seekers from other regions—and championing the EU’s international campaign to impose penalties on Russia. Orbán has eschewed solidarity with Ukraine, only signing on to the EU’s sanctions after raising vociferous objections and causing extended delays.

In essence, Orbán is cynically attempting to reap the contradictory benefits of good relations with the Russian aggressor—including cheap energy supplies—and membership in the EU. Poland’s PiS government, by contrast, is aligning with or even leading the EU on issues of security, but using that stance to distract from or excuse its continued resistance to the enforcement of EU norms on the rule of law and other democratic principles. Like many more repressive regimes around the world, the Polish government is effectively asking its democratic partners to ignore its domestic abuses—the political capture of the Constitutional Tribunal, for example, or the legal harassment of journalists—in exchange for cooperation on security matters. The fact that the Ukraine conflict is explicitly a defense of democracy against authoritarian aggression, as opposed to a faraway struggle against terrorism or insurgency, may make this strategy untenable in the long run.

The rift on Ukraine policy should not obscure the serious damage done to democratic institutions and human rights in both countries during the current governments’ tenures. Under the guise of unconstrained majoritarianism and a selective adherence to constitutional and legal procedures, or what Kim Lane Scheppele calls “autocratic legalism,” the ruling parties in Budapest and Warsaw have systematically co-opted the judiciary, sidelined the independent media, and funneled public resources to progovernment, illiberal civic organizations.

If it is to maintain meaningful cohesion grounded in shared democratic standards, the EU must not hesitate to enforce its rules in Poland and Hungary. Trading them away for short-term concessions on sanctions or security matters would only strengthen the centrifugal forces that threaten to pull the union apart.

Stable instability in the EU’s southeast

The Russian invasion did little to shake many of the EU’s democracies from their patterns of partisan turmoil, and in some cases it added fuel to the fire of political dysfunction. In Romania, Slovakia, and Bulgaria in particular, a propensity for stable instability remained in evidence.

In Bulgaria, where anticorruption protests in 2021 led to the ouster of then prime minister Boyko Borisov’s conservative Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party, a durable government proved elusive. A four-party coalition led by Kiril Petkov took office in December 2021, but ongoing disagreements over policy issues, such as the withdrawal of Bulgaria’s objections to North Macedonia’s EU accession bid, prompted a vote of no confidence in June 2022. Parallel disagreements voiced by President Rumen Radev over Bulgaria’s provision of military aid to Ukraine had notably compelled Petkov to use covert means to deliver supplies for Kyiv. With no new coalition deal on the horizon, voters recently returned to the polls in April 2023 for their fifth round of parliamentary elections in two years.

Similarly, political disputes over unpopular policy decisions led to a successful no-confidence vote against Prime Minister Eduard Heger’s government in Slovakia in December. The country’s political instability was coupled with dysfunction in the courts and prosecutorial service, which have long failed to address hate crimes against minority groups. In October, just a week after the brutal murder of two people at an LGBT+ bar in Bratislava, the parliament voted against a proposal to provide same-sex couples with the same rights to inheritance and medical records as heterosexual couples.

Romania proved more capable of stable governance in 2022, a welcome development given the country’s extensive history of rule by fragile minority coalitions. Despite the current government’s broad base of support in the country, however, Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă’s cabinet was not free of controversy. Multiple plagiarism scandals and tendentious statements about the war in Ukraine prompted several ministers to resign.

It is important to note that these countries’ political travails had no significant impact on their democratic institutions or Nations in Transit scores during the year, aside from a small National Democratic Governance decline in Slovakia. Partisan and policy disputes were worked out according to parliamentary procedures, and voters were called on to resolve major impasses. Nevertheless, in the absence of more lasting systemic remedies, there is a risk that the influence of pro-Russian factions in Bulgaria, a violent culture of intolerance in Slovakia, and chronic ethical breaches in Romania will gradually weaken the public’s trust in democracy itself.

The EU’s power to influence its periphery

Whereas the region’s democracies were relatively resilient and the Consolidated Authoritarian Regimes almost uniformly deteriorated, the Hybrid Regimes in Nations in Transit 2023 exhibited—as might be expected—a mixture of progress and setbacks. Of the 10 countries classified as Hybrid Regimes that are not EU member states, five earned improvements and three suffered declines in their Democracy Scores, with incremental democratic reforms partly offset by endemic corruption and challenges to media independence.

Nevertheless, a common throughline connects this large and institutionally diverse group of countries: Moscow’s renewed invasion of its neighbor made clear that the EU is their only viable option for political and economic solidarity.

All critiques of the union notwithstanding, membership has yielded material benefits for states that have joined. In part due to redistribution and investment under the EU’s Cohesion Policy, even Bulgaria, the poorest country in the bloc, fares better in both socioeconomic terms and the democratic indicators of Nations in Transit than all the aspirant countries of the Western Balkans, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus.

Closer relations with the EU therefore appear to be the sole path forward for states in the region that want peace and prosperity. Polling data bear this out, showing that a majority of citizens in the EU aspirant countries have a strong desire to achieve formal membership. But they are also aware that the accession process has been complicated by a number of factors, both internal and external to each candidate. Whether these problems can be resolved in a way that strengthens rather than weakens the EU’s democratizing influence is a crucial question for the entire region.

Democracy’s front line

Ukraine, Moldova, and Armenia have steadily improved their democratic institutions in recent years, driven forward by civic activism and consequential elections. Even as authoritarian aggression and skullduggery have threatened their basic security, the people and their freely elected leaders have fought to improve governance through close collaboration with local NGOs and professionals.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine was designed in part to scuttle this progress and reassert the Kremlin’s influence over such states, but instead it broke an EU deadlock on the issue of accession. The union was forced to recognize these countries’ democratic momentum, and the fact that closer relations were an imperative for its own security.

Moldova and Ukraine were both granted full EU candidate status in 2022. Moldova’s political leaders demonstrated their governance credentials amid a national security crisis on the border with Ukraine, a tense relationship with the opposition, and an entrenched corruption problem. In Ukraine itself, the war has undoubtedly and understandably challenged the government’s adherence to democratic principles.For instance, the authorities restricted the reach of opposition media channels, presumably to present the public with a unified message of national defense. Nonetheless, Ukrainians and their elected officials, held in check by a robust civil society sector, generally rejected the notion that political rights and civil liberties could be cast aside during wartime, indicating the country’s democratic strength and its remarkable distance from Moscow’s understanding of security as the opposite of freedom.

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[1] Url: https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2023/war-deepens-regional-divide

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