Wealthy EU states treat Eastern Europe as a colony | Hacker News Reader

Wealthy EU states treat Eastern Europe as a colony

unherd.com

24 pointschewz15 comments

> In the East, meanwhile, the elites are shamed to silence, for they’re complicit in a population collapse of wartime scale. Croatia has lost almost a quarter of its people (an existential meltdown, one premier dared to moan). Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic three of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia have seen a fifth of workers go. Poland has lost over a tenth.

Are we saying that, say, the Polish state owns the Poles and if the latter go abroad they are stolen goods?

The rest of the article seems to assume that Poland would be better off outside of the German value chain, which borders insanity.

Not own, but since they invested billions into education that has seen a net negative return, there is reason to fret a downward spiral unless those that benefit rebalance the load.

Yes, the local political class and elites should take responsibility and act so that people stop expatriating, if that’s really what they want. What the article suggests is that we blame the foreigner, ie the German and the Briton, because they allow educated Poles and Italians to earn a decent salary.

Besides, in Poland we are starting to see a reversal, as the country keeps growing and becoming richer, net migration has become positive. So one may argue that Western Europe, while benefiting from the Polish workforce it imported, also acted as a relief valve for Polish unemployment, while the country was catching up with the west.

Are we Eastern Europeans supposed to cry that the Iron Curtain is no longer here to protect us from moving to places with higher quality of life?

Are the non-EU states like Belarus and Ukraine really better off than CEE EU states? While the situation may not be ideal for the CEE EU states, the alternative doesn't seem great either.

It seems like a hit piece to me. Nothing is compared to other brain drains that happen through out the global economy. In the EU system places like Prague and Tallinn have grown and reasonable amounts of money comes back with retirees in Europe. In countries with greater wealth inequality how do the brain drains play out?

I don’t know what to say to that, other than to talk about my experience living in Eastern Eruope: about two of my friends are the ones who remained in the country, everyone else has gone to the west, whether Austria, Germany or the UK, they all understood that there’s a better life waiting for them there (with its own pros and cons, of course). So very few remain with the will and the courage to wish for a system that’s not corrupt and fundamentally broken. And not just the people in STEM. Natural resources are also increasingly leaving, whether legally or through bribes to officials.

And the money, something which always gets thrown at Eastern Europe, how it benefits from incredible amounts of grants - that tends to end up in private pockets and not in restoration, infrastructure or innovation.

Again, I can’t tell you what the way forward should be, because I don’t see it myself and I’m certainly not smart enough to imagine it, but what’s happening is certainly noticeable even to individuals.

My point is that all those things happen in Belarus as well, except even worse. The average salary in Poland is around $1500 usd. In Belarus, it’s 300. In Ukraine, it’s around 800. Belarus is not immune from brain drain, either. Those who can leave, do leave. So the author should consider the alternative to joining the EU before calling the relationship exploitive.

I fully agree with your stance. I am from Romania, and, although there are still many things missing, things are, IMO, getting better.

There might be some sort of colonial relationship going, but we are getting in return many things as well, and we have grassroots economic initiatives lately as well. The political system is still a mess, but where is it not?

For me, personally, it would make little sense leaving the country. Biggest reason could be the education system sucking a lot compared to the much better education system somewhere in the EU, and this would become important once I have kids.

Average salary in Belarus is $579, in Minsk is $812 and for IT is $1824. Data for July 2021.

Cost of living in Minsk is 2-3 times lower than in other EU capitals.

The same happens in Southern Europe and membership of the EU allowed me to get a 6-digit income and to live in a country where I don’t need a political affiliation to get a decent job and where the state bureaucracy is not merely a welfare system for government employees.

I’m not sure I’d blame this state of affairs on the countries that decided to not be economic basket-cases. What should Germany do? Cut its productivity or destroy its value chains?

Individually there are of course benefits to being able to go to richer countries. On the whole though it is obvious that a free market within the EU is vastly better for the large established industries of the west.

An underdeveloped country can hardly compete with the likes of already huge corporations without some serious backing from the state. And even then it may be unfeasible.

Of course you can blame Germany and other developed nations with established industries that while benefiting from educated immigrants and the free market within the EU don't care to give anything back, or even view this as problematic in any way.

I don’t see this as problematic because, at least for Eastern European countries, the west absorbed some of their unemployment, while they were catching up, potentially reducing internal tensions and smoothing the transition to a modern high value-added economy. Access to the European market allowed them to become part of the German value-chain, which produced wealth and exported technology and know-how. All this while receiving transfers from the West to build infrastructure.

I’m not sure what alternative scenario we could have had. I think that Poland outside the EU would have ended up closer to Ukraine than to where it is now (Poland GDP per capita PPP is 3x the Ukrainian).

The CEE states have seen strong economic growth and they are treated in quite colonial fashion by the old EU. These things are not mutually exclusive.

If anybody scratches their heads why PiS and Fidesz happened, that's one of the reasons why.

Old EU can follow letter of the law, yet it's still evident that companies from CEE can't compete with those who can out-capital them, and who discriminate against them in a million subtle ways.

And the PIIGS countries also.

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