Easterners still pro-EU 5 years on

Despite positive attitude toward membership, many may not vote in upcoming Euro elections

A woman walks past an election campaign poster of the Bulgarian ‘Leader’ party, with a picture of the head of the party Emil Koshlukov, in central Sofia, earlier this week. The European Parliamentary elections will take place on June 7. The slogan reads ‘We want change.’

By Gareth Jones - Reuters

WARSAW - The European Union remains popular among East Europeans five years after they joined the bloc, but many will not vote in June's European Parliament elections because they do not expect it to improve their lives.

The once booming ex-communist region of Central and Eastern Europe has been badly hit by the global economic crisis and some new EU member states - Hungary, Latvia and Romania - have had to seek emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund.

EU membership is viewed as providing a measure of security in such turbulent times and has prompted some nations, including Poland, to step up preparations for eventually joining the euro.

«The EU remains an attractive proposition for most new EU citizens from the east. In many countries, there is a broad awareness that EU membership is shielding them from the worst effects of the economic crisis,» DemoEuropa, a pro-EU, Warsaw-based think tank, said in a commentary.

«That is why the European Parliament election in most newcomer countries is unlikely to turn into a protest vote against the EU or the pro-EU establishment, though in places where the crisis was compounded by economic mismanagement... ruling parties look set to receive a bloody nose.» In the «big bang» enlargement of May 2004, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined the EU, along with the tiny Mediterranean islands of Cyprus and Malta.

More than 375 million people across the 27-nation EU are eligible to vote in the European Parliament polls on June 4-7.

A recent survey in the Czech Republic, whose President Vaclav Klaus is a vocal Euroskeptic, showed only 15 percent of Czechs were dissatisfied with EU membership.

In Poland, the largest ex-communist member, up to 85 percent back EU membership, polls show, while in Hungary, whose economy is set to shrink by nearly 7 percent this year, support has also stayed firm, with few blaming Brussels for the country's woes.

In Bulgaria, which joined the EU with Romania in 2007, the bloc's institutions are far more trusted than the Balkan country's own graft-tainted government and parliament.

Overall, regional surveys suggest younger, better-educated people tend to be most positive about the EU and its benefits.

»I see around the country lots of EU-financed projects and one certain advantage for me is free movement of labour,» said Jan Kolarik, 27, who works in the Czech travel sector.

Millions of East Europeans have moved to Western Europe, especially Britain and Ireland, since 2004 in search of better-paid jobs or to study, though some have trickled back as recession deepens in many of the older member states.

»It is good that support and loans from the EU helps Hungary fight itself out of the economic crisis,» said Adrienn Szabo, 26, who teaches Hungarian to foreigners in Budapest.

But she and others across the region said they were more concerned with rising prices and unemployment than with the relatively abstract issues that often dominate the EU's agenda, such as institutional reform.

»People are more concerned about what social cuts will be made by our government at the moment,» said Dainis Skrinda, 26, a banker in Latvia, the region's most battered economy which may contract by as much as 16.5 percent in 2009.

»I think there will be low voter participation in the European Parliament election because people don't want to get involved anymore. There is no hope or trust left. It's hard to say if anything actually improved after we joined the EU.» A low turnout, which is also predicted in Western Europe, would be the result of poor awareness of the Parliament's role and also possibly a misguided belief that the newcomers' representation is too small to matter, Poland's DemoEuropa said.

As in Western Europe, there is concern that low turnout could work to the advantage of fringe parties, especially on the far-right, using voters' distress to whip up fears about ethnic minorities such as the Roma or loss of national sovereignty.

Complaints heard on the streets suggest there is a market for such populist messages.

«Poland really doesn't exist anymore. It continues only in theory since EU law trumps national law,» said Stefan Kozlowski, 68, who runs two Xerox machines in central Warsaw.

«Brussels does nothing to hike Poles' salaries and pensions or help to improve our dreadful health service,» he added.

In Budapest, retired engineer Tamas Nyeki, 74, said EU membership was fine in principle but that he had not personally benefited from it and, like many older voters, expressed nostalgia for life under communism before 1989.

«Under the old regime, I had a good life, a good flat, a job. I was even able to travel abroad several times,» he said.