Twenty years after the fall of the Wall

The European Union as the victim of its own success?

Panel members in Brussels included Timothy Garton Ash, Oxford University, Antonio Missiroli, European Policy Centre, Rita Süssmuth, former president of the German Bundestag, and Estonian President Toomas Ilves (left to right).

Source: Bertelsmann Stiftung Brussels Office

The panel that met on November 5, 2009, in Brussels to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall was in complete agreement: 1989 was the best year in Europe's history. "Like no other date, November 9, 1989 stands for a European Union whose main objective was and is the continent's reconciliation," said Jerzy Buzek, president of the European Parliament, speaking at the panel discussion organized by the Bertelsmann Stiftung and the European Policy Centre.

During the discussion that followed, several speakers -- particularly Rita Süssmuth, former president of the German Bundestag, and Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford -- noted that the past two decades have been an unparalleled success for Europe. From the transformation processes they underwent to their acceptance of democracy and a market economy, the EU member states in Central and Eastern Europe re-entered "Europe" faster than originally expected, they said. Yet at the same time, as Estonian President Toomas Ilves and former Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra pointed out, Europe's unification process is at risk of becoming the victim of its own success. While 1989 marks the beginning of a new global order in which Europeans had to reposition themselves, neither the EU's Neighbourhood Policy nor its policy for dealing with Russia, nor its attempts to position itself as a partner equal to China and the United States on the international stage can be seen as successful.

Concurring with Süssmuth, Ash stressed that, above all, the people in Central and Eastern Europe, with their courageous resistance to the communist regimes in place there, had achieved something previously thought impossible. "While it is no problem to turn an aquarium into a fish soup, they successfully managed to turn a fish soup into an aquarium," Ash said. Yet, he added, the hopes have not been fulfilled that 1989 would go down in history as the second founding of the European Union, by virtue of its allowing all of Europe to grow together. Even the EU's newest member states now have little passion or energy for the ongoing process of integration, Ash said, something that is negatively impacting neighboring states such as Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus, who currently lack any prospect of accession. This, he said, is in addition to the lack of any recognizable strategy on the part of EU for dealing with Russia. And exactly this unresolved relationship with Russia is a considerable handicap for the EU when it comes to positioning itself within new governance structures such as the G20, he added.

Süssmuth seconded Ash's assessment, emphasizing that the EU cannot rest now that it has 27 members. What is needed, she said, is an ambitious redefinition of the EU 27's relationship with its eastern neighbors and Turkey, without the EU offering the prospect of full membership, at least not at first. Current global challenges such as the financial and economic crisis and emerging global migration patterns require a more integrated approach, she said. Instead, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe threatens instead to fall back into old patters of nationalist thinking, she said, as demonstrated by the protectionism currently making itself felt in many member states.

In his remarks, Vondra called 1989 the "best year" he has ever experienced, contrasting it with 2009, "the worst." Starting with the Russian-Ukrainian gas crisis, which greatly impacted the Czech Republic, to the fall of the Topolánek government, in which he served as deputy prime minister, and attempts by Czech President Václav Klaus to delay ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, 2009 has been a year of countless lows, Vondra said. Twenty years ago, global politics were defined by the demise of the Soviet Union, the power exercised by the United States, which was at its zenith, and the flowering of democracy, he said. In contrast, he noted, we are now at a point where Russia is once again expanding its sphere of influence, the US is in decline and international interest in promoting democracy has also grown weaker. In retrospect, the past 20 years have taken Europe into "an era of expansion fatigue," he said, which is why it must now start by finding new ways to win back the trust of its citizens.

In his concluding statement, Ilves said that over the past two decades Europe has undoubtedly traveled a remarkable path and that given the extent of the changes that have taken place on an international scale since then, 1989 can rightly be compared with the transformative years of 1918 and 1919 that followed the end of World War I. At the same time, he said, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the EU still faces two monumental challenges. First, it must reassert its place as a legal union, one that ensures European laws take precedence consistently and uniformly over individual nationalist interests. Because Eastern Europeans in particular have little understanding for the notion that "democracy is not an issue" for the EU, the Estonian president maintained that, second, the EU can and should exhibit more international leadership when it comes to promoting democracy.