If Not Europe, Then What?

My holidays here in Montenegro were a bust. I had planned on spending my holidays here to travel around the area, both in this country and in the neighboring states, and get to know the Balkans better. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate with my plans. It has been a dreary, cold, rainy season this year. I look out my window now and gray slabs of cloud and mist blot everything. The natural beauty for which Montenegro is known lays suffocated under ugly.

Of course, Montenegro is not alone in the wetness of this winter. It is a phenomenon that has been widespread all over Europe. The seasons flop and fumble these years, unsure of themselves. Last year, Europe had a warm winter. This year, a cold and wet one. The randomizing weather patterns are a European legacy Montenegro shares in these days of global climate change and the greenhouse effect.

Unfortunately, despite sharing a common meteorological bond, there is still a great divide between Western and Eastern Europe, and Montenegro lies squarely on the other side of the (no longer iron, perhaps a thick ream of bureaucratic, visa riddled paper?) curtain.

Granted, for Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union fell and the days of communism have been left behind, forgotten as one forgets the embarrassing antics of a late night drunken outing. For the most part, Eastern Europe has renounced its communist past and now commits itself wholly to the trappings of capitalism. Barely a capital city in the region is without a McDonalds or Miss Sixty, and billboards to Nokia have replaced the statues to Lenin that once held sway here. Some countries even make overtures of adopting democracy. Eastern Europe tries to prove to its Western brethren, as much as to itself, that it is ready to forget the past and adapt to Western European standards.

Of course, the greatest signal of this trend - and the greatest status of success for those Eastern European countries that have crossed over to the Western side - is the fervor by which Eastern European countries try to win admittance into the EU. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in Montenegro. The tallest new monument in the capital Podgorica is the arching Millennium Bridge, a monolith of scaffolding that makes no pretensions to be anything other than a symbol of "bridging" the gap between Montenegro and Europe in this new millennium. Indeed, despite not yet being in the EU, Montenegro uses the euro as its official currency. How much more determined can you get? Romania and Bulgaria have already been admitted into the EU, and the rest of the Balkans are eager to follow suit. As Montenegro exemplifies, joining the EU is to be forgiven its communist and Milosivic past and be welcomed into the new, shiny, European future.

There are indeed great things about being welcomed into the EU. It's great for a country's financial development, and the citizens are free to travel where they will between the member states (and for Eastern Europeans, who have had to be subjected to interrogations and humiliation at borders their whole lives, this must surely come as a blessing. Oddly, one of the few trappings of the communist era that remains in Eastern Europe is the snide, suspicious behavior of the border police.) But on the other hand, there is an arrogance in presumption on the hand of Western Europe that makes the whole process rather suspect.

At heart, there is an unspoken assertion that European Union countries are "really" European, and that those countries seeking admission into the EU must prove they are European "enough" to be welcomed into the club. Of course, the EU doesn't see it this way. According to the EU, countries seeking admission into the EU must prove an acceptable level of democracy, racial tolerance, and economic and political transparency. Yet, the reality doesn't seem to bear this out. Neither Romania nor Bulgaria are free of corruption. Indeed, in light of the Kosovo situation, the EU has offered Serbia a "fast track" to EU membership. So, what, standards of democracy are only required of EU applicants when they are convenient to the rest of Europe? No, rather, as Serbia shows, all that is required to be granted to the EU is that a country grovels enough, submits itself to the will of Western Europe, grants Western Europe's cultural superiority. For an Eastern European country to be welcomed into the EU, all it needs do is admit it is inferior.

The true tragedy in all this is that Eastern Europe is so ready to forget its own recent history and throw in with the democratic legacy of Western Europe. Granted, there is a lot that should be moved past in Eastern Europe. The horrors inflicted on Estonia and Moldova by the USSR, the despotic reign of Ceausescu in Romania, the racial onslaught driven by Milosovic in former Yugoslavia. Indeed, it is great that Eastern Europe has moved past these nightmares and is turning instead to the democratic model of Western Europe. But the horrors of the past cannot merely be forgotten if a country is to hope to move into the future. The real repercussions of those tragedies, and the underlying factors that led to their arising, don't vanish just because your nation buys some voting machines, allows its finances to be audited, or opens franchises for Mango or The United Colors of Benetton to drive its citizenry to pursue the almighty euro. These countries have not been healed in a few short years, cannot be, and European Union membership is no salve for their underlying wounds. Eastern Europe needs to embrace its history, for better or worse, come to terms with it and accept it as its own. This is far more essential than euros and makeshift democracy in this region, and far more relevant for true prosperity and a real future.

Eastern Europe is already European, is already the real Europe. And the problems of fragile ethnic identity in this era of globalization, the aftermath of Soviet and communist regimes in the area, and the necessity to balance the prospects of capitalistic prosperity with the danger of losing all that is unique in a culture's heritage - these are definitively European problems. All Eastern Europe needs do to prove its European legacy is tackle these problems, meet them head on and resolve them peacefully and absolutely. This is far more indicative of what it means to be European in the modern age than buying German packaged goods with shiny gold euros, and these should be far more pressing concerns for these nations' governments than winning membership into the EU.