The EU is loose within the EU, the members are pregnant with ghosts, and the contradictions are not a day or two, but in recent years, the intra-year struggle has become more and more intense, before the Brexit drama, and now Western European countries have begun to "set fire" to Hungary, and there is a great threat to "expel" the EU.
The recent "siege" of Hungary in Western Europe stems from a bill officially passed last month in Hungary that would prohibit school educational materials and television programs from disseminating LGBT information to minors. After Hungary passed the bill, it was bombarded by the European Union, and even called Hungary a "shame of Europe", directly demanding that Hungary must abandon the bill.
But the Hungarian government, led by Prime Minister Orbán Victor, refused to compromise and eventually passed the bill, which went into effect on July 7.
According to people familiar with the matter, if Hungary continues to implement the bill, the EU may interrupt economic assistance to Hungary.
Orban responded that the allegations were completely unfounded. Rather than saying that Hungary is a "disgrace", it is better to say that some countries want to blatantly meddle in the internal affairs of the Hungarian side and "resolutely reject their slander against the Hungarian side"!
The EU is probably not only worried about Hungary's tough attitude, because Hungary is not "fighting alone", Poland and the Czech Republic clearly expressed their support for Hungary, and then Slovenia also joined the warband to support Hungary, Prime Minister Janice Jansa denounced that the imposition of "fictitious EU values" by Western countries within the EU on other countries will make the EU move along the road to disintegration.
This is not surprising, because these countries are also at odds with the EU on similar issues. Eastern European countries have gathered together, which is a bit of a rift within the EU.
(Polish women march against the 'abortion ban')
The contradiction between East and West Europe does exist, but the essence is not in what LGBT.
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As an Eastern European country in the former socialist camp, it quickly turned into the staunchest opponent of communism and the most loyal dog licker in the West after the upheaval. The clock goes back 30 years, and it is too late for these Eastern European countries to have any dissatisfaction with the EU.
At that time, these countries had just undergone political upheavals, the socialist regime had fallen apart, and the planned economic system had come to an end.
Seeing the superior life of Western Europeans, Eastern Europe is naturally full of yearning; at this time the wall has fallen, and they are naturally free to pursue a panacea, so that they can live the kind of life of Western Europeans.
If it is a panacea, how can people give it at will? At this time, the "businessmen" who "sell medicines" appeared.
There was an economics professor at Columbia University named Jeffrey Sachs, who was born in 1954 and was a minor in the 1980s.
But Mr. Sachs was young and ambitious, and in order to make a career, it was painstaking. People do not sleep for at least 3 days this week, and after the completion of teaching tasks, they also have to work all night to engage in academic work. It is said that he never slept more than 5 hours a day.
His wife, Sonia Eric, a pediatrician and mother of three, nicknamed "A Happy Single Mom.". After all, my husband is home for a day.
The rewards of the effort are clear, and Sachs' academic research has received a lot of attention. Among them is the Government of Bolivia.
In 1985, the Bolivian government's inflation rate was as high as 24,000 per cent, its external debt was $5 billion, and its interest payable was nearly $1 billion, exceeding export earnings. The national economy was on the verge of collapse.
Bolivia, where dead horses were used as live horse doctors, became the first test field for the sachs. Employed as an economic adviser, Sachs proposed a set of economic programs and policies, the main contents of which were:
Implement austerity financial and fiscal policies, reduce government spending, eliminate subsidies, liberalize prices, liberalize trade, achieve exchange rate stability through currency depreciation, further reform of administrative and tax systems, privatize parts of the public sector and enterprises, rearrange debt and receive foreign aid, and so on.
Due to the implementation of this set of economic programs and policies, it has a strong impact, and in the short term, it may cause huge shocks to the economic life of the society, and even lead to a state of "shock".
This is known as "shock therapy".
Shock therapy has been far more successful than expected in Bolivia. In the first year of shock therapy, Bolivia's GDP fell by 2.9 percent, but in the following years it maintained a growth momentum of about 2.5 percent, and hyperinflation and a severe debt crisis were strongly contained.
Sachs, who won the first battle, had good luck, and Su Dong, who was wandering after the upheaval, naturally became his bigger test field.
Sachs rushed to Russia and Eastern European countries in the early 90s to continue to sell his shock therapy.
Sachs summed up the shock therapy he was peddling this time into three modernizations: stabilization, liberalization, and privatization. To put it bluntly, it is better to restore economic order through harsh austerity policies, then to achieve trade and exchange rate freedom, and finally to privatize state-owned enterprises.
Sachs believes that as long as this shock therapy includes three modernizations, Eastern European countries can successfully complete the transition from a planned economy to a market economy in the shortest possible time. You'll be able to live the Western European life of your dreams.
Eastern European countries, from governments to people, have said, then what are you waiting for? Hurry up.
After all, in that era, the ideology of communism suffered unprecedented setbacks, as if to put an "ideological stamp" on everyone's brain, and "deregulation" became the best way to develop the economy.
Moreover, these countries are eager to join the process of European integration, and needless to say, there are also demands for economic liberalization.
Their vision is beautiful. In 1989, Mikros Vasarei, a prominent leader of Hungarian liberals, expressed his wishes in an interview with The New York Times, a former Hungarian socialist workers' party member who announced to the world that he had completely embraced Europe and liberalism:
"A real Europe will emerge again, and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will eventually unite with Western Europe, and we will live under the same conditions." It may take a while, but eventually we will reach the same level socially, politically and economically as in the West, and the door of hope is now open. ”
As a result, liberals from all over Eastern Europe came to power, and these "rebels" of the former system, who suffered from "totalitarian persecution", of course became synonymous with freedom and symbol. After winning the election, they began to seriously engage in shock in accordance with the demands of Western Europe.
In Hungary, for example, in order to improve competitiveness and reduce the country's heavy debt, Hungary hastily privatized state-owned companies.
In the process of privatization, a total of $12 billion of state assets were sold. Today, fewer than 300 of Hungary's original 2,000 state-owned enterprises remain (with assets worth about $2.9 billion). The private sector of the economy already accounts for 85% of GDP.
Hungary has not only become liberalized, but also more liberal than most of the "old capitalist" countries.
Hungary, which joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004, tied itself politically and economically to the chariots of Western Europe, faithfully implementing the directives of Brussels and Berlin on fiscal austerity and economic liberalization. The Western European licking dogs of other Eastern European countries have used almost the same method.
But does this bring the life that Eastern Europeans want?
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It is a well-known fact that shock therapy has failed in Russia; in the past, it has always been said that the same shock therapy has worked well in Eastern European countries such as Poland and Hungary.
Here's a word – top it!
Neoliberal reforms not only created extreme inequalities in Hungarian society, but many of the results were even catastrophic. The sharp decline in economic output, the surge in unemployment, the decline in the standard of living of the majority of the population, and the widening social inequality and poverty have become emblematic features of Hungarian society.
The 1990s can be counted as a "lost decade" for the Hungarian economy. The prolonged economic crisis and stagnation caused economic output to recover to 1989 levels until 1999.
Due to the sharp decline in production, long-term unemployment has become one of the hallmarks of the Hungarian economy. A large number of cheap and skilled labor is a resource, but the continuous loss of domestic job opportunities has led to a large number of labor flows abroad. Between 1989 and 1997, Hungary's labor force fell from 5 million to 3.5 million, a reduction of 1.5 million, and the official unemployment rate was 9.6 percent.
The restructuring of the economy also led to a significant decline in the standard of living and overall welfare of the population, which did not recover slightly until after 1995. Real incomes did not reach the levels of the 1980s until 2003.
According to a 2003 survey by the United Nations Development Programme, the proportion of poor people in Hungary's total population is as high as one-third (close to 3 million). Meat consumption is still below 1980 levels.
At first, Hungary retained the welfare provisions of the socialist era, but the government continued to cut these provisions, citing budgetary constraints. Today, modest unemployment benefits are only three months long, and social provision is meager.
The working class, which makes up about 40 percent of the population, was hit hard in the 1990s by the economic crisis and the shrinking labor market. The situation was also not necessarily better for those workers who survived the initial crisis of transition, who suffered more exploitation and worked longer hours while their real wage earnings fell.
In this vicious circle, more and more Hungarian workers are leaving – in foreign countries that are only three hours away from Hungary, they can earn three times the current wages, better public services and higher unemployment benefits, so why stay in Hungary?
Regional differences make inequality in Hungary even more pronounced. Since 1989, Budapest and the western region adjacent to Western Europe have seen an influx of significant investment, while other regions have received very little investment. The industrial areas of the north-east, which were hit particularly hard by the collapse of heavy industry production and mining after 1989, were the places where Hungary suffered the most unemployment, poverty and social problems.
In the battle for investors, successive governments have reduced the corporate tax rate to 9%. Foreign corporate giants dominated the Hungarian economy: the largest banks were Austrians and Germans, and supermarkets and IT and telecommunications companies were also monopolized by German capital. The same goes for production: the biggest companies are Audi and Mercedes-Benz.
Developments in other Eastern European countries are similar. In Poland, for example, child and temporary workers have become a serious social problem, and the proportion of workers who signed unsafe temporary contracts was as high as 27.9% in 2015, while the unemployment rate was still 7.4%... On the issue of external dependence, Germany is Poland's largest trading partner and the largest export market for Poland, and 1/5 of Poland's total foreign investment comes from Germany.
It is understood that the turnover of foreign-funded enterprises in the Czech industrial sector has reached 3 trillion crowns (about 142.8 billion US dollars), accounting for 59% of the total turnover in this field, needless to say, foreign capital mainly comes from Germany, Italy, the United States...
In society, girls (and boys) in Eastern Europe are gradually filling the red light districts of Western Europe... 100 euros for half an hour, 150 euros for an hour...
Under "shock therapy", it is not only Russia that shocks, but also the whole of Eastern Europe. Eastern Europeans are gradually discovering that their own asset control, labor, natural resources, and even gender resources are flowing to Western Europe. Eastern Europe was completely transformed into an economic colony of Western Europe.
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The West spares no effort to sell radical liberalism to post-socialist Eastern Europe with its "success stories"; but what the West will not explain at all is that it is not this thing that relies on its own success.
As the world-renowned development economist Zhang Xiazhun has said, almost every successful country has adopted naïve industrial protection policies and other active industrial, trade and technological policies in "catching up" with other countries.
In the same way, Britain's so-called free trade actually occurred after a long policy of trade protection; similarly, the United States did not begin trade liberalization until its industrial hegemony after World War II was unchallenged; and serious infringements of intellectual property rights continued to plague the most developed countries today until the late 19th century.
The developed countries are now the result of their development, not the cause of their development, and they cannot be reversed as a cause. Now they recommend simple neoliberal "good governance" to latecomer countries, which is actually a "rich country trap" set up to safeguard their national interests.
Eastern Europe, which opened the door to these "good governance", did not usher in the liberal democracy and affluence they wanted, and this anti-phagocytic force was already accumulating.
(Some of the nonsense is destined to be deceitful)
But some people in Eastern Europe understand it, and some people pretend to be confused. The liberals who ruled Eastern Europe after the upheaval did nothing in the face of the problems posed by excessive liberalization. They believe that no matter what the crisis, the market will save us, don't be afraid, now it is only a pain; if the pain is too much to bear, the Germans will come to our rescue.
But anyone who has seen the debt problems of Greece and other countries knows that the prescription prescribed by Germany is nothing more than a set of fiscal austerity...
At the same time, if anyone or political group proposes to regulate and monitor the market, they will immediately be labeled a "restored Stalinist" by the liberals and center-left in Eastern Europe, making them unable to speak...
In 2006, a secret audio recording of Hungarian Prime Minister Djulciani, a socialist party member who pursues economic liberal and free-market policies, was exposed. In the recording, he said that for the Hungarian economy, "we messed up not a little, but a lot" and "we lied from morning to night".
Poland's liberal Party, the Civic Platform Party (PO), which saw poverty and unemployment soar during its time in power, brazenly claimed that Poland was in the best period of 300 years under their leadership. Rosa Luxemburg's coffin board could not be suppressed.
Such a blatant lie can be deceived for a while, but it cannot be deceived for a lifetime. As a result, Eastern Europe gradually began to change.
In 2010, Orbán and his Hungarian "Alliance of Young Democrats" won the election by an overwhelming margin, and then he explicitly proposed an "unorthodox" and "illiberal" economic policy to fight the "Western financial crisis" against the "Western financial crisis."
Since 2010, the Orbán government has imposed a "crisis" tax on industries dominated by Western European companies and one of the highest in Europe on foreign banks. Hungary, he said, needed to create a "national bourgeoisie," which required keeping Hungarian capital in Hungary, allowing for internal investment, and encouraging the development of its internal economy.
First, Orban's government sought to nationalize utilities and much of the banking sector in the name of "economic patriotism."
Orbán's government announced that at least 50 percent of the banks should be in the hands of Hungarians, a target achieved by November 2014 through the acquisition of foreign banks. The state sector has expanded significantly in banking, energy, public works, transportation, media, advertising and other sectors. In these areas, the state purchases property rights. The weight and influence of the state-owned economy in the economy have increased.
Second, under Orbán, Hungary began to shift from a free economy to a regulated economy.
Since 2010, the Orbán government has tightened its grip on the economy. For example, the control of public utility enterprises is forced to reduce prices for residential users. The State intervenes in the execution of contracts by means of legal means.
In 2014, the government passed a law declaring the foreign currency mortgage contracts signed between banks and households for the previous 6 to 12 years to be invalid, at the expense of causing banks to suffer huge losses. The areas of control expanded, from cafeterias to casinos, from tobacco retail stores to pharmacies, with State control everywhere.
At this time, the opposition parties were still advocating for Hungary to be "more European", but it was seen for themselves that the efforts to advance toward Europe over the past decade had been disastrous and jeopardized their work. So now Orbán's position in Hungary is so solid and unstoppable.
In other Eastern European countries, this trend is also very pronounced, and politicians representing the interests of the national bourgeoisie use their dissatisfaction with the economic colonization and political intervention of Western Europe to attract the support of voters.
The current Czech Prime Minister, Andrej Babiš, himself a national capitalist, is the second richest man in the Czech Republic, making his fortune by acquiring state assets at low prices during the liberalization process. When elected last year, his populist political platform slammed the failures of the post-1989 pro-European liberal elite.
In Poland, the leader of the ruling party (Law and Justice Party (PIS), Jarosław Kaczyński, is a conservative whose nativist ideas are widely accepted because the fruits of social and economic liberalization changes do not meet voters' expectations.
Seeing that Eastern Europe is not "cooperating" as before, the Western European side has been greatly ignited and has used various means to suppress it in the name of the European Union.
Since 2011, Orbán has been publicly humiliated on his way to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, with the European Anti-Fraud Office saying it found "possible fraud and corruption" in Hungary in public investment projects, and the European Commission repeatedly prosecuting Hungary for the treatment of refugees.
"Human rights issues" are the daily operations of the European Union, but the "economic colonization" behind them is also rare from time to time.
The European Union and many international organizations have accused the current Eastern European regimes of economic nationalism as a "step backwards" from liberalization. Hungary's policy of restricting foreign investment has been attacked by the European Union. One of the EU-affiliated institutions, the Luxembourg-based European Investment Fund, refutes it with a statement each time Orbán introduces new economic controls.
The European Commission also used Hungary's public program problems to attack Orban. The EU argues that Hungarian law is designed in a way that fails to ensure transparency, which can lead to bid-rigging and serious corruption. Under this pretext, the EU side filed a lawsuit against Hungary over the tendering for the project at the Parks nuclear power plant on the grounds that the project did not comply with EU law on public procurement.
But those who know the truth know that the real dissatisfaction of the EU is that the winning bid is not the German company, hungary contracted it to the Russians...
The European Commission also published a report in 2014 arguing that Hungary's public works programs were more of a welfare employment program than a stepping stone to private sector jobs. This statement is tantamount to asking European investors to leave Hungary.
Poland faces the same challenge in taxing foreign banks.
The European Central Bank has publicly stated that Poland's new bank tax rules will prompt financial institutions to adjust their portfolios to riskier products and use off-balance sheet operations to transfer assets offshore, thereby changing the risk profile of financial institutions.
The ECB also urged the Polish government to carefully assess the impact of bank taxes on financial stability, credit growth, and economic performance.
Many pro-European Polish commercial and trade organizations have also vigorously attacked the government's tax reform, which has caused a lot of noise for a while...
Unfortunately, Eastern European countries may now know where the problem lies, but they can't find any systematic way to solve it. After the upheaval, they hate communism to this day, and now they resist liberalism, and the result is bound to become unequal and unruly.
The Hungarian Olban-style answer is not necessarily correct; but the European Union, unwilling to abandon economic colonialism, must not be the answer to Eastern Europe...
Resources:
The New York Times: How did liberal dissidents in Hungary and elsewhere become heroes of the far right?
Kong Tianping: The re-transformation of Orbán and Hungary
Martino Comelli/Vera Horvas: What Orban knew and what his enemies didn't know
The New Yorker: The Unfree Nation Open Democracy Net: The Polish left must offer a real alternative to breaking the right-wing deadlock
Chuck Bechampan: Orban destroyed Hungarian democracy, and conservatives liked him