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bne December 2019 30 Years of transition I 39
Going beyond the statistics, Javorcik recommends looking at the younger generation. “Look at college students
in CEE: they feel they are no different from their colleagues in the West – they watch the same films, listen to the same music, they dress the same way, they can travel and they take all this for granted. For them it seems that the world has always been this way,” says Javorcik. “For me that’s the best kind of progress.”
Moving forward together
The performance of the economies
that emerged from socialism in 1989- 1990 has diverged over the last three decades, with the first wave of EU accession states that joined the bloc in 2004 still somewhat ahead of Bulgaria and Romania, which joined two years later in 2007. But the differences among these countries today are not so large as those between Central Europe and the former socialist countries to their east.
The Central European countries were helped by their strong skill bases that helped them attract investment from the beginning of the transition period: “One thing these countries have going for them is a good endowment of skills, that was one of the good legacies of central planning.” This helped the development of the IT and outsourcing sectors, as well as specialisation in areas like automotive where the
region was historically strong.
Another positive legacy was gender equality including in tech and sciences; the gender differential in Central Europe tends to be smaller than in the West
for example when it comes to maths
and science students, and studies have also shown a larger share of women
in the ICT and high-tech industries
in Central than Western Europe.
Over time, Central Europe has become more than a low wage destination, even though wages, while rising rapidly, still lag behind those in Western Europe. “We observe the movement up the value chain. If you were to compare productivity at a Volkswagen factory
in Slovakia or Hungary and Germany you wouldn’t see substantial differ- ences ... Central European countries
30 years after fall of Berlin Wall Pew poll finds progress but a values fault line lies across Europe
Ben Aris in Berlin
With the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the international pollster the Pew Research Center has released a report looking at how attitudes to democracy, liberal values and market economies have developed in the last three decades. The results are depressing. While all the countries in Emerging Europe have made progress there is a still a fault line that runs roughly along Ukraine’s western border and down to the Black Sea where everything to the west is much more liberal and everything to the east remains mired in traditional illiberal mores, grounded in the Orthodox church’s conservativism.
Changing people’s attitudes is a work in progress and it can take generations. While very few people in New Europe regret the end of the old totalitarian- ism and centrally planned economies, they are not exactly happy with the new system either. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought destitution and suf- fering to hundreds of millions of people that they have not forgotten and the competitive nature of the mercantile capital system has favoured the young, but failed to materially improve the lives of those who were in their 40s and above in 1991. There is still a lingering resentment amongst many, especially the older generations. And even the young, the big winners from the changes, are caught between two worlds as they embrace the challenges of the new system, but were brought up with the values of their parents.
“Thirty years ago, a wave of optimism swept across Europe as walls and regimes fell, and long-oppressed publics embraced open societies, open markets and a more united Europe. Three decades later, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that few people in the former Eastern Bloc regret the monumental changes of 1989-1991. Yet, neither are they entirely content
with their current political or economic circumstances,” Pew said in its latest report entitled “European Public Opinion Three Decades After the Fall of Communism.”
One of the first results to jump out of the research is those countries in Central Europe that joined the EU in 2004 have been big winners and their populations are pretty happy with the changes since then.
Asked if they approved or disapproved of the switch to multiparty systems and the market economy, the support for both was overwhelming in countries like Poland (85% approve of multiparty politics, 8% disapprove; 85% approve of market economy, 8% disapprove), Czechia (82%, 11%; 76%, 16%) and Hungary (72%, 20%; 70%, 19%).
Meanwhile, when asked if the principles of democracy – such as fair judiciary, gender equality, opposition parties – were important, Russians consistently marked these down as the least important to them of anyone polled by Pew.
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